Secret Origins: The Encased Hippopotamus

When I was eight, my father took my sister and me to the Field Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Natural History. We were going through the dioramas of African mammals and we saw the encased hippopotamus.

‘Isn’t he a funny looking animal,’ my father said, ‘'he just looks like a big pig, but he’s actually one of the most vicious animals in Africa. More people are killed by hippos than any other animal. They will charge even at a Jeep.’

This was important. It was the first time I realized that I knew more about a subject than my father did. I realized that he had confused an hippopotamus with a rhinoceros. I did not feel dizzy or nauseous. I stared at the glass encased hippopotamus and let my eyes change focus from it to the glass’s reflection of my father’s face as he went on talking about the hippo.

I straightened my back a little and thought about how this changed everything. I had convinced my mother to leave the Catholic Church several years earlier—perhaps a story for another time. By the time I was three, I had open contempt for the notion of Santa. But it had not occurred to me to question my father’s reliability. He was certainly real enough anyway and seemed to know quite a bit about many things. This was the moment, with my gaze continuing to oscillate between the hippopotamus and the glass reflection of my father, I began crafting my wings.

I had no idea at the time how waxen they were.