The Story

I can see.

This is one of those first not-thoughts a baby probably has. You spend nine (coughTENANDAHALF) months cooped up in a dark safe space and then AHHHH AHHHH shluuuurk there’s light and sound and some weirdo counting your offshoots. It’s no wonder we enter this world screaming.

It’s so damn bright.

The mammal eyeball is arguable among scientists to be the most complex evolved organ. There are some biologists, whose papers are still under review, who would like to argue that the jellyfish rhopalia is even more complex, and its mysteries are still hidden within the divine.

To this I resolutely say: So? That’s still an eye. Dang, why are we arguing about eyeballs? Or, excuse me, visual-interpretive physiology.

It’s all very complicated. Pupils and ocellis and gook. Yet not a single one of us: human, jellyfish, bat, butterfly, bird, even those mantis shrimp who can perceive all those extra colors, can adjust to see as fast as a light can shine.

We are all weak to the bursting illumination. It is so damn bright.

Conclusion being, I should not have felt too embarrassed to find out the deafening scream shaking my soul was coming from my own throat.

Because oh my actual God that was an angel.

“Be not afraid.”

“HOLY FUCK!”

“Be not afraid, Steven Winters, for we come with-“

“HOLY. FUCK. WHAT THE HELL.”

There was a long, silent pause. Perhaps they were trying to give me a moment. I needed far more than a moment.

“Steven Winters, we come to you with a-“

“OH MY GOD. SWEET JESUS.”

Perhaps it was the painfully intense rouge of the sunset, but in a short moment of awareness, it seemed that the hundreds of eyes squinted in irritation.

A hum moved through the air.

“Steven Winters, we come to you with a path-“

“OH. MY. GOD. ARE YOU FUCKING ANGELS?”

I was apparently still alive and in a timeline that had some sort of relevance to my own, because I did have a millisecond to recognize this was a stupid question.

Because if not angels, what else were they? Everything I’d heard or seen (admittedly, in amateur horror films) about demons were dark and/or red, and these… Beings? Were, well, I’m not entire sure what color pure light is. I’d like to say white, but it’s more so such a brightness that color bows out of the equation.

I swear I heard a sigh.

“Be not afraid, Steven Winters, we come with good news.”

Oh damn, maybe I was dead.

Because let me tell you- I am no shepherd. I mean, I shepherd a couple technical deployments for government branches who are planning on launching missiles before all the other government branches I also work for do, but I don’t feel like that’s the same as sheep, despite what some politicians say.

The only alive people I could think of that angels spoke to were shepherds and virgins. And thanks to Charlene Carol sophomore year, I wasn’t that either.

“AM I DEAD?”

I could not stop shouting. Honestly, I wished I could. I felt rude. But you see a being made from God’s first drafts and keep a level tone, then you can judge.

“Steven Winters, you shall live. You shall live on the path chosen for you alone, which we bring to you this day and-“

“HOW MANY LANGUAGES CAN YOU SPEAK?”

Where this question came from, I do not know. But I’d been working with our AI agent on understanding foreign characters so I could suggest turn it off and back on again to international spies researchers, so perhaps it was just on the brain.

There was the not-squint again. I was perhaps testing eternal patience.

“We can speak to all His Children, despite their language. You may hear us in your tongue.”

I nodded back as if this was normal. As if my backyard frequently hosted the divine. I glanced towards the grill, abandoned when a great thundering announced the presence of my current guests. Should I offer them a tuna steak? My mother had instilled host priorities deep into my bones, surely that applied to the other worldly. Or this worldly. Next worldly. Whatever.

Plus it would make an okay excuse to get take a second, get my heartbeat under control. I gestured with my tongs at the grill in a (what I hoped was) universal want some? conveyance.

The many eyes opened wider, and an orange shimmer skipped over the many encircling rings hovering a few feet above my bird feeder.

“Yes, Steven Winters. We would love a tuna steak.”

“Faaaaaantastic. Sauce?” Food was a language I understood.

The warm hum filtered through the air again. Then, “We will receive the offering spiced only.”

I pulled the fish from the grill. Despite the unique interlude, it was a perfect medium rare. I plucked a piece of cilantro from my scraggly herb garden and placed it atop the best looking slice.

Hesitantly, I placed the plate at the mossy ground before sticking a fork in the piece I prepared for myself. It had a little char, but I liked it that way.

I opened my mouth to ask how to better serve the angelic being (do they need cutlery?), but before I could, I saw the plate was already empty.

“Thou art kind and artful with the meat given of the waters, Steven Winters.”

“I, uh, thank you,” I said, navigating a large piece into my mouth with my shaking fingers to stop talking. It was indeed the best tuna I had ever cooked. I unashamedly moaned. Must remember to re-up my subscription to Penny’s Spices.

There were several moments of silence passed between us. The evening cooled, the dusk overturned to dark. A few bats soared out from the house I had set up for them, but spotting the bright being, scattered to the trees for shelter. My neighbor loudly strolled his garbage bin to the end of his driveway, waved casually at me, and returned inside.

“Steven Winters.”

“Yes. So sorry. Never had literal divine intervention before.”

“Mmm. Mmhmm. Be not afraid.”

“You very much hesitated that time,” I pointed at it with my fork, because I was clearly insane and apparently manners were the first thing to go, “so I feel like afraid is maybe something I should consider.”

“No, Steven Winters. Thou wilt receive a gift.”

“But is this like a genie gift? Where it seems like a gift but it’s really a curse?”

I knew I was pushing it. My soul ricocheted inside me from the tip of my forehead to my slippered toes, as if pacing itself through my horrible decisions. I couldn’t help myself. I had been a good kid in Sunday school! I knew Abraham had to psychologically torture his own kid. Mary had to leave her home and straight up had to watch her son get killed! Moses gets blocked from paradise, Hagar got lost in the desert, Jacob? maybe Job, it’s been a while, had to freaking wrestle divinity itself! I was not in comfortable angel-witnessing company. Yet I pushed.

“I’m just saying, y’all’s track record-“

“Steven. Winters.”

Oh yeah, I had upset them. Too bad shutting-up was not among my talents: “You have to be at the wrong place.”

Because I was a nobody. Not in the way Mary was a Nobody, quietly descended from King David and righteous in all her actions. No no- I was born a white, dirty blond, 5’9″ Presbyterian, barely baptized by unenthusiastic parents, drank too much and had not made it past a situationship with a reputable woman. These shiny things had landed in the wrong backyard. Or! Or. Or I was having a very hallucinative seizure. I hadn’t quite ruled that out yet.

“The Lord Your God does not lead astray.”

Oh okay, then explain Charlene Carol, but whatever. At least I had almost recovered control of my vocal cords.

“What can I… do for his… His. Lordship?”

The being seemed to shimmer with satisfaction. Cool cool cool.

“Steven Winters. You are shown a path into the wilderness. Your Lord God chooses you to lead His children into a place of safety until the storm hath passed you by.”

Oh good. A Noah-level task. I could barely put my Ikea furniture together with an automatic screwdriver and a six pack. I should really not be trusted with an ark.

Before I could object- and I was going to object- there was a noisy rustling around me. Cinnamon, a deer I had so named due to her gorgeous dusky copper fur, stepped out from my hydrangeas with her spotted twins and several unfamiliar siblings. A raccoon family pulled themselves from under my shed while two possums loaded with their litter skittered down from my half-dead oak trees. The few bats I had thought ran off settled next to the wrens on my fence, as multiple hummingbirds buzzed by my ears. I looked down at my leg to inspect a new sensation, seeing the mainecoon-ish stray cat I’d been calling Booger curling around my feet.

“These… children?”

I turned to set my plate down, but it was gone and my hands were free. Fine.

“Steven Winters.” I swear the voice that made my bones buzz sounded happily tempered now, “Much is to come. You are to go into the mountains. You are to lead His Children up the path. At the peak, where His sun rises and sets, you will find a home where you will remain until you are Called.”

I looked at all the creatures peeking nervously back at me. There were hooves and fangs and wings. I had placed feeders to lure them, traps to dissuade them, and now I was to lead them?

“Well. Alright then,” I felt suddenly solid, decision made, “can I… can I get a stick? A stick seems good.” All the best guys in stories had a stick.

A staff appeared in my right hand. It was twisted gray driftwood, yet sturdy in the soft ground.

“God be with you, Steven Winters.”

The Beings, the light, the tuna steak, were gone.

Just me and my new stick and a bunch of wide-eyed forest creatures.

Cool cool cool.

“Alright gang,” I said, feeling two of the bats settle on the hood of my sweatshirt, “let’s get going.”

The Word

Gifted (adj): having exceptional talent or natural ability.

How many of us were in the “gifted” program in Elementary/Middle/High school? How many of us thought that would do literally anything for us in the adult world?

Me. I did.

It’s several years too late to talk to Gen-X and Millennials about the trauma we accrued from Gifted Programs. But settling into the other side of young-adulthood, it’s really sinking in that no one is coming to deliver us from the regular class to play mathematical board games.

For me, this lesson came HARD in my first job- where my naturally bubbly personality was viewed as ignorant and flirtatious. It wasn’t enough to be right, I had to be right in the right way. I had to dull my gift to be seen as the correct kind of shiny. I hated it, I still hate it, and I feel deeply for a world we could have where we were actually ourselves and the work got done.

Today was a particularly hard day for “gifted doesn’t mean everything is a gift to you” lessons. I stared it in the face, and crumbled. I had to call for backup, I had to rally the reinforcements, I had to drink some wine and cry.

And from that turmoil came Steven Winters. Who is nobody. Who just happened to be exceptionally good at math in his younger years, and although it got him a scholarship, all it’s done since then is make his life monotony. Until he finds a much greater Gift than Gifted is upon him whether he likes it or not.

I hope the same for all us formally-Gifted kids. That, if we haven’t already, we might find that bearing of purpose in a tumultuous sea of expectations. Wouldn’t it be pleasant if someone just told us which way to go? Alas, we are not all Steven Winters.

Just a note- I am totally plugging Penzy’s Spice. Or I tried. But autocorrect kept making it “Penny’s” so I gave up and decided it was a sign about copywright or something. Anyway, Penzy’s Spices is awesome.

Happy reading, my dears. And may a compass always be nearby when you feel lost.