I Was Told I Would Get Wings

As a child, I was a Brownie. All of my friends were Brownies. It was part of being a kid. My memories of Brownie meetings and Brownie activities are rather dim. I have other memories from those long-ago days, very vivid ones, stuff that has to do with sitting on the hot bulkhead eating a popsicle, and running through the sprinkler in the backyard – wearing a swimming cap – why? – and the smell of the mud in the woods where Jen and Katy and I would make up games, and the sound of the screen door slamming on summer nights, and the time I crashed my bike into a mailbox and got a huge cut, and skating with Andrew in the pond in the woods and how he would steal my hat and I would chase him.

I have a lot of vivid memories from childhood, but very little remains about “being a Brownie”.

What does remain is how it ended.

At the end of my sojourn as a Brownie there came a moment which I think of now as my loss of innocence. I can laugh at it now, I can turn it into a cute story, but it crushed me when I was 8 years old. “The first cut is the deepest.”

So here, briefly, are my memories of being a Brownie before “the Fall”:

— I remember having Brownie meetings in the big cafeteria (“caf”)/gymnasium at South Road School which was called “the Multi-Purpose Room”. I love that name. It really tells it like it is. “Okay, so we’re all going to go watch a play now in the Multi-Purpose Room!” “Let’s go eat in the Multi-Purpose Room.” “It’s rainy today – so we have gym in the Multi-Purpose Room!” And of course: “After school Brownie meeting in the Multi-Purpose room.” All of us little Brownies sat in a circle as the troupe leaders (who were mothers of my friends) led the meeting. I have friends now who have kids of their own, and are now Brownie troupe leaders. Those women who were my troupe leaders seemed so OLD to me and they were younger than I am now. I remember too that the mothers who led Brownies (and this is neither here nor there, I’m not making a judgment, it just happened to be that way in my little troupe) were the kinds of women who had bleached hair or frosted tips, Lee Press-on nails, and were tanned, year-round. They were also the kinds of women who didn’t go to the big public beach like my family did, but were members of private “beach clubs”, where they rented “cabanas”. It was a foreign world, I tell ya. They smoked long thin cigarettes and when I played with their daughters at their houses, sometimes they would put out bowls of candy for us. CANDY. A far cry from the Saltines and popsicles available at my house. To use my mother’s terminology, these women were “jazzy”.

— I remember marching in the Parade with the troupe, and feeling so proud of my little brown uniform, my little beanie hat. I particularly loved holding the flag as we marched. Oh, my heart swelled with my own importance. I tripped on my shoelaces, however, and fell while holding the flag as we reached the rotary in Peace Dale. I loved telling that story when I met up with my parents at the end of the parade route. I turned it into a rollicking good tale. I was good at that: turning moments of adversity into jokes where the joke was on me. I loved (and still love) jokes where the joke is on me.

— I remember being entranced with the “Brownie book”, which I don’t think they use anymore. Probably because it had too much of a pagan slant and religious parents would object. The book tells the story of the Brownies, with illustrations. I can still see those illustrations in my mind. They were so evocative. The Brownies were small fairies who would creep out into the moonlight around a magical pool in the middle of the woods and dance and sing their Brownie songs. Well, that for me was the ENTIRE appeal of being a Brownie. I wanted to be part of that pixie fellowship. I could see the silver moonlight, I could hear the rustling of the leaves, I loved the darkness, the cool dew, the feeling of a secret special ritual … I was totally in the Brownies for THAT.

Little did I know that, in actuality, being a Brownie had nothing to do with shimmering moonlit nights and pagan rituals around a mirrored pool. It was more about gluing interminable amounts of spray-painted macaroni onto random pieces of cardboard in the Multi-Purpose Room.

I was never into prose, especially in terms of life-style, even back then. I always preferred poetry. The romance of the moonlit woods. I wanted life itself to be poetic. I suppose I still do. There’s a beautiful moment in Postcards from the Edge when Meryl Streep says, in a moment of revelation, “I want life to be art.” I wanted the poetry, the possibility of something magical happening.

I accepted the “prose” nature of being a Brownie, mainly because that was what you did. I didn’t really question it. I didn’t really enjoy Brownies, truth be told, but everyone was in Brownies. So I had to be there. But our meetings in the Multi-Purpose Room were a pale ghost of the extravaganzas that went on in my imagination, secret meetings in the middle of the night, out in the woods.

But all lukewarm things must end, and it was time to move on and become a Girl Scout.

The moment when we would become Girl Scouts was referred to as “Flying Up”. The troupe leaders also talked about how we would “Get Wings”. There would be a “Flying Up Ceremony”.

None of this was explained to us in literal terms. Or if there ever was a literal explanation of what “Flying Up” actually meant, I was out that day. I took it all completely literally since no one explained to me that the whole thing was basically just an elaborate metaphor for a “graduation” ceremony. This “Flying Up” thing, to me, resonated and shimmered with magic. “The Flying Up Ceremony”. It sounded so … fantastical. So exciting! What did it mean? What would happen at the ceremony? What were the “wings” we were going to get? It all was so mysterious.

I truly believed that somehow, during the ceremony, I would “Fly Up”. To where was still unknown, but I would “Fly Up”. There were “Wings” that I would get that would help me to do this.

Some sort of transformation was going to take place.

I pictured the wings in my mind and I imagined that they would be elaborate huge constructions, wings that would make Icarus envious. They would HAVE to be big if they were going to carry us up off the ground, right? I imagined them. I worked it all out. What I imagined was real to me, not something I HOPED would happen, but something that WOULD happen.

Some of the wings (we each would get two, one to fit over each arm) were made of actual feathers, soft as down. But there were other wings made of sparkles, and glitter, like one of Elvis’ capes. It would only be revealed on the day of the “Flying Up Ceremony” what kind of wings each of us would get. I wondered if mine would be the feathered kind. I thought that I would prefer feathery wings to the glittery ones, but I told myself sternly that I wouldn’t mind either way. I made a promise to myself that I would be happy with whatever pair of wings I got, even though I preferred feathers. I talked myself down from that hypothetical disappointment beforehand: “It’ll be okay if the wings I get are glittery. It won’t matter.” It is amazing to me, in looking back, how realistic I was with myself, in the days leading up to the “Flying Up Ceremony”, preparing myself for the disappointment of getting glittery wings.

It’s like somewhere I knew. I knew that disappointment was going to be inevitable. No way could the “substance of things hoped for” ever live up to what was in my mind.

The fantasies about the wings went even further. (And this element, to me, is the most interesting thing about the entire memory). Not only did I imagine what the wings would look like, the wings which would help us “Fly Up” to be Girl Scouts during the “Flying Up Ceremony”, but I also imagined what the wings would be like a couple months after the ceremony, crushed in the bottom of my closet, once the novelty wore off. That, to me, was THE most pleasing fantasy of all: to be “over” the wings, to be lackadaisacal about what was going to prove to be a transcendent experience. “What are those feathery things in my closet? Ah, those are nothing … no big deal … just my wings from my Flying Up Ceremony … No big deal …” I LOVED that fantasy. I turned it over in my mind again and again. Even more than dreaming about the upcoming “Flying Up Ceremony”, I LOVED fantasizing about being “over” the magical wings, and seeing them crushed in a heap in the bottom of my closet.

So the big day came. The day when all the Brownies would “Fly Up”.

The ceremony was held in the Multi-Purpose Room, of course. I had wondered to myself: How will we get up high enough, so we will actually be able to fly? I had thought, Well, maybe they will stack some of the lunch tables on top of each other, and then put them on the stage … Maybe that will be high up enough for when we put on our wings …

This all may sound incredibly silly. But nobody had ever actually told me what the ceremony was going to be, none of those jazzy tanned mothers had ever explained to me that “Flying Up” was a metaphor. I was in the world of poetry, you understand. Nobody told me the whole thing would be prose.

I suppose I was eager, even then, even as a little girl, for transformation. For transcendence. I look back on that little girl … and see myself now. No change. No difference at all.

I wasn’t sure how the Powers-that-Be were going to handle the challenge of getting all us Brownies up to a good enough height so that we wouldn’t fall like stones when we leapt (I intuitively understood aerodynamics, I remember worrying about all of this obsessively) but I was sure that SOMEONE would have figured it out.

When I walked into the Multi-Purpose Room, I was stunned to see how few people were in attendance. My mother was there and a couple of other mothers but it seemed to be a VERY thin crowd for such an extraordinary ceremony of transformation.

I’ll just say this, for those of you who were never Brownies, I’ll tell you what the real thing is: The “Flying Up Ceremony” is when each Brownie gets a small badge, a badge of two outstretched wings, pinned onto their sash. This wing-badge means: You are now a Girl Scout.

That’s all it was.

It had never been said to me, point-blank: “You will get a wing-badge, and then you will make the Girl Scout vow, and then you will be a Girl Scout, and that is what the Flying Up Ceremony is all about.”

The jazzy frosted-tip ladies spoke in shorthand. “So, girls, when you Fly Up …” “During the Flying Up Ceremony …” “After you get your Wings…” They assumed we knew the terms. I didn’t have an older sister who would have clued me in a bit earlier and crushed my dreams in a gentler more realistic way by saying, “Here is what is going to happen…”

So there I was, making up elaborate fantasies of Icarus wings, tables stacked on top of each other, little girls flying through the air of the Multi-Purpose Room, convincing myself that it would be okay if my wings were glittery and not feathery, and then looking forward to the day when said wings were crushed in a heap in my closet.

The ceremony began.

In a flash, when the first girl “Flew Up” and became a Girl Scout, the veil was yanked from my eyes in a painful swoosh. I saw the teeny wing-badge, I heard her say the Girl Scout vow, and then I saw her step aside to let the next person go, and I realized that that was it. That was it. That was all the “Flying Up Ceremony” was going to be.

Furtively, I glanced around the Multi-Purpose Room, hoping to see a big cardboard box (for the wings, you understand). I remember so specifically looking for that box … the box that contained the REAL wings … that they had ordered from some magical Brownie warehouse from deep in the forest by that silvery pool…

but already I knew it wasn’t there.

I went through my “Flying Up Ceremony” with a huge smile on my face, plastered across my freckles. I acted like I was really happy about my little wing-badge. I didn’t want to show how much my heart had just cracked, how grey the entire world suddenly became.

I hid my heart from everyone. I was immediately very ashamed of my fantasies. I was ashamed of my fantasies AS I said the Girl Scout vow. I felt stupid. Like, of course, everybody else knew what the “Flying Up Ceremony” was going to be. I was the only one who didn’t know. I was the only one who was devastated. Everybody else was giggling, and excited to be a Girl Scout. Inside – inside – I was crying with disappointment. I thought about the crushed wings in my closet, and felt a piercing mixture of longing, despair, and shame.

Where are my wings? Where are my REAL wings?

There weren’t going to be any wings, feathery or glittery. There would never be wings crumpled up in my closet.

There would be no transformation.

Here is a Coda:
I only made it as a Girl Scout for a couple of months. I quit the day after we spent an entire meeting making duffel bags.

My parents didn’t give me a hard time about quitting. I never looked back.

It’s unusual to have a photo of yourself at the moment a dream dies.

I was better off, I suppose, in the make-believe world of acting and drama club and community theatre. There, at least, you knew the wings were pretend, but your belief in them remained intact.

Nobody was trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

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15 Responses to I Was Told I Would Get Wings

  1. I quit Brownies when we went “camping” the same weekend my brother went with Cub Scouts. They got tents and didn’t bathe for three days. We had cabins with cots and sinks and running water and were expected to wash up. Poetry vs. prose indeed.

  2. sheila says:

    Yeah, can’t Brownies rough it, too? What’s the fun of camping??

    I am not a craft-oriented person anyway – I was very bored with that element of the Brownies, but it was the “flying up ceremony” that did me in!

  3. What a great story. One of my favorite parts was the “Mutli-purpose Room”. We had the “Cafa-gym-atorium” at our school. And Caleb, my oldest, had the same at his first school. I cannot vividly recall many of these moments from my childhood, most are buried pretty deeply inside. However, my heart cracks every time I see my Caleb go through these moments. Like yourself, the heart is always perched perfectly on his sleeve and it’s very apparent how he feels. I have told him to journal so he can always remember. I can only hope he follows an example such as yours. Thanks for sharing.

    All my best,
    Chuck

  4. sheila says:

    //Cafa-gym-atorium // Ha!

    I am actually not sorry it all went down the way it did. I am not particularly happy about how ashamed I was about the fantasies afterwards – that I could have done without – but the fantasies themselves were quite lovely and I loved having them.

    Little kids have such intense experiences!!

  5. Melissa says:

    You’re like a real-life, modern-day Emily of New Moon. Can I say how much I love that about you without sounding condecending?

    (I think my Brownie meetings were also in the cafeteria/secondary gym, but girl scout meetings were at the leader’s house. Somehow I don’t remember the Brownie Book, though. Sounds lovely)

  6. sheila says:

    It’s totally Emily of New Moon!!

    That Brownie book was awesome – I can still remember the illustrations!

  7. bybee says:

    I liked the Brownie book, too. Mine had a sort of manual look with an orange cover. The main thing I remember about Brownies is that one day we made butter. We had a little crock and churn and we passed it around in a circle and sang this song first in unison then as a round:
    “Come, butter, come
    Come, butter, come
    Johnny’s at the garden gate
    Waiting for his butter cake
    Come butter, come
    Come butter, come.

    Flying up ceremony: Someone brought in a little wooden bridge and we walked across and got our wings and said the Girl Scout pledge. We had to wear white gloves.

    • sheila says:

      That butter churn song is hysterical and kind of disturbing. I don’t remember that!

    • Emma says:

      I wasn’t in Brownies, but I remember singing that little “come, butter, come”
      as I churned the soured milk to make butter! Now that was a LONG time ago.

  8. tracey says:

    Oh, Sheila. I just love this piece, though it breaks my heart for little Sheila. Look at your eyes, your smile. It kills me.

  9. Jane says:

    That is such a sweet story, Sheila. Beautifully told. Reading it recalled my own childhood moments of disillusion.

  10. Paul H. says:

    Awwwww. One of our curses is that life rarely lives up to the imagination of a child.

    Wing-badges? You didn’t need no stinking wing-badges!

  11. shahn says:

    I was a Brownie too! We also met in the Multi-Purpose Room. Our leader was a classmate’s mother who was not only DIVORCED but a SMOKER. She supervised my baking project to earn a badge and I remembered being so concerned that the smoke and ashes would end up in my cupcakes.

    I also loved the Brownie Book, but I loved the outfit accessories even more – especially the elastic belt with the embossed buckle and the pouch that hung on the side. It came in real handy when I decided I’d rather be Harriet the Spy than a Brownie. That pouch held all kinds of necessary Spy paraphernalia.

  12. Lou says:

    This was quite possibly the cutest post EVER. : )

    It was a sad day in my elementary school when the “Multi-Purpose” Room became the “All-Purpose” room. Just wasn’t the same. : (

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