Dear Dining Room in the House on Belmont Street Circa 1981,
When I have dreams of flying, I am always flying at that house, around the yard in big, swooping circles, just missing the fence and then up, up and back down to the front door and around and I’m sure this is why:
When I was young I was convinced that I arranged the chairs in a circle around the outer wall of the dining room and jumped from chair to chair while flapping my arms and could do it fast enough, that I would eventually take flight. I knew it. I could feel it. I could feel exactly how my heart and tummy would feel when I took to the air. I could hear my mother in the kitchen making dinner. I had to avoid the stereo in one corner. My sister was little and I tried to get her to join me but she was too small. In fact, I was too small – I couldn’t even jump from chair to chair. But I tried. I stretched my legs a little farther each time. That was a key part of it – you had to want it bad enough. Your need for flight would stretch your body and help it gain momentum until the air lifted you like it would a balloon.
Why you? Why were you the place I knew I could fly? Dunno. Maybe you were on a specific ley line? I can’t imagine you still exist in the same formation you did all those years ago, but I’d like to imagine that if I found myself in your space, even if you are now part of an eat-in kitchen or a family room, or a master bedroom addition, that I would be able to once again feel what I once felt – that utter conviction that I could conquer gravity. That I would feel the change in the air that means impossible is possible, that the ground and the sky can interchange, that the yearning of my soul can be translated into movement, a flapping of arms that would lift my heart up until it grew, light and sparkling like a soap bubble.
-e.