Imagine the first time you ever went swimming; floating in the warm water, your mind teetering precariously between naiveté and innocence. Scared at first, you try vainly to struggle against the will of the warm water but eventually relent until gravity is no longer a law but a mere suggestion, a whimsical memory of life outside of the water. The buoyancy is no longer your foe but a great ally that allows you to glide across the sheets of crystal clear water of the pool.
Replace that tepid pool water with the icy loneliness of the blue atmosphere and the pillowy clouds of moisture cooling the soft skin of your eyes and nostrils and lips. And that would be a fraction of the incredible sensation of human flight. All around you is pure freedom straight from the source: the heavens themselves!
My first flight happened at the tender age of six. It was a hot summer afternoon and the heat rose from the ground, showered from the sky, and blew in from the sides along the backs of a dozen breezes as if from the desert. I was too tired to get up and find a pool or lake to jump in having spent my weekly allowance chasing the ice cream truck around the neighborhood and enjoying the spoils of catching up with it. But I so badly yearned for the relief of the water splashing against my face so I closed my eyes and pictured myself floating.
I used every fiber of my six year old imagination to feel myself floating, fighting with all my soul to defy the restraints of gravity. As I opened my eyes I could feel the clouds running over my knuckles and between my fingers truly thinking I had transported myself to a swimming pool only to find that I was flying through the sky. My disbelief promptly alerted gravity to my misdoings and my first flight ended with my face being planted into the firmament.
A few scrapes and scratches later I managed to master the art of flight only to be grounded at the age of thirteen not by the FAA or an angry parent but by peer pressure. When I was thirteen I was called a “freak” for the first and last time. I’m not sure what it is about that age that somehow makes the opinions of others weigh heavier on my young mind, but it was definitely heavy enough to keep me from taking flight again for more than a decade. There was, I’m ashamed to say, a point in high school where I didn’t just deny that I knew how to fly, but I forgot that it was even a possibility. I was too concerned about what others thought to focus my energies on what truly made me happy.
I didn’t remember what it was like to ride along the back of the winds again until my junior year in college. Interests change when you’re learning to become an adult, when you grow into the person you know you will become. But one thing always remains the same. There will always be that one part that yearns to crawl back to those summer days when the only worry was allowing ice cream to run over the edge of that waffle cone and onto your hands.
If there was one reason that convinced me to start flying again it would be the night I fell in love with the young woman who was to be my wife less than a year afterward. “What is your biggest secret?” she asked. “What is the one thing about you that makes you utterly happy but, for whatever reason, is something that you’ve hidden away until someone like me digs it out of you?” I told her to close her eyes. Reluctantly but amused she relented and closed her eyes. I wrapped my arms around her and gently pressed my lips against hers.
She didn’t even feel her feet leave the ground and if I’m being completely honest I didn’t notice it either. With a shudder she opened her eyes and gasped when she saw that we were quite literally dancing on the clouds. It was cold that night, I remember. Even more so for her, being her first flight and all. With the air as thin as it is at those higher altitudes, the blood freezes much more easily. Her cheeks grew rosy, so I brought as back to finish the dance on the ground. That’s when I knew I loved her, when I realized that she was the one to spend the rest of my life with. It’s a good rule of thumb. Someone’s only worth being around if you can fly freely around them without feeling like a freak.
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