The History of Human Flight

My grandparents lived in a huge, beautiful house while I was growing up. The back yard was a wide expanse of mown grass, followed by a large field they left to grow wild, followed by seemingly endless woods. I spent nearly every weekend there for much of my early youth, enjoying the excitement of my grandpa picking me up from school, of watching my Saturday morning cartoons without my younger sister's interference, of having a nice cup of soup on Saturday afternoon, of exploring the house and sometimes, if I was feeling brave, the woods. The best part was simply being alone. My grandpa usually worked on Saturdays, and even if he didn't, he was occupied with the vast project of lawn maintenance almost the entire time I was there. My grandma was similarly occupied with the Herculean effort of thoroughly cleaning the entire house every weekend. I loved my grandparents, of course, but the true appeal of their house was the almost total freedom to sit and watch TV, or to develop elaborate plots for my action figures, or even to help with the yard work or housecleaning. It took me a long time to learn to control my instinct to throw a fit when my parents came to pick me up.

When I was in seven or eight, my grandparents got a swimming pool in the back yard. Nearly every weekend during the summer - maybe even every day sometimes - the entire family went over to their house for a lazy day of laying around. My sister and I would generally go over with my aunt at about noon to find my grandma inside, almost invariably cleaning house, and we would have gone through several cycles of getting wet and drying off by the time my grandpa and my mom got home from work. Since before my birth as the first grandchild, I knew that my real family consisted not just of my mom, dad, and sister, but of my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and eventually my little cousins, Tyler and Tanner. The pool proved to be the place where that knowledge was confirmed and deepened as we played water volleyball, tipped each other off the floats, had contests to see who could stay under water the longest, and even moved into the back yard for a game of badminton. We shared many meals and a great deal of laughter around that pool; my sister, Hannah practically grew up in the waters of that pool; even our family's various dogs felt a special bond with those waters (and even more with the huge yard).

Of course, as great as all this was, it compromised the atmosphere of my grandparents' house somewhat. The house that was my sanctuary was now invaded by the whole family on a disturbingly regular basis. I could gain some modicum of solitude by riding my grandpa's mower in seemingly endless circles in the back yard, and I could even try to stay under water as long as possible, using an inverted raft as a place to get my air. I could attempt to climb the single climbable tree in the back yard and could explore behind the barn. All of those attempts at solitude and freedom never seemed to measure up to the times when I would step into the back yard and just start flying.

It was surprisingly like swimming underwater, really. I would just open my mouth, let the air flow in, keep it in my body, and float around in the sky. I don't want you to think that I was anything like a balloon, because that would be a tragic misunderstanding of this special talent I discovered. I now suspect that letting the air into my body was more symbolic (even sacramental?) than strictly functional, indicating my openness to the air around me. The way I flew was also nothing like a balloon. I could dive, I could make sharp turns - I was almost like a bird. I made sure to stay relatively close to the ground, because I've always been a little afraid of heights, and I didn't fly terribly fast. I kept my arms out for balance, but not really for flapping purposes.

I'm still not entirely sure how exactly these flying sessions began or ended, because it certainly wasn't an act of will on my part. Quite unexpectedly, after I had gotten out of the pool, dried off, and decided to run around in the big field, I would occasionally feel myself lifting off the ground, and I would take in (or allow in?) the air, and then just as unexpectedly, I would start to feel heavy and let out the air as I slowly descended to the ground. Although this fact never really struck me at the time, I think my family failed to notice these flying sessions, or at least they had an almost appallingly casual attitude toward them, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Strange as it may seem, the second seems more likely to me - how likely is it that my entire family, nine people other than me when it was in full force, didn't notice that the firstborn grandchild was flying? The table on the deck was usually arranged so that the chairs didn't face the field, and the women of the family tended to fall asleep on the rafts while sunbathing, so I suppose it's not totally inconceivable that they weren't paying any attention. The whole thing is very strange.

At times I suspect that it only really happened one time, because every time I did it seemed so similar to the previous time. An experience like that is something that you really remember, and I know that sometimes I have had vivid, triggered memories, almost on the order of something out of Proust. Sometimes if the wind hits me just right on a September afternoon, I can remember how it felt to be in marching band rehearsal, or how it felt to be walking home from elementary school, or how it felt to have my first day off classes at Olivet when I didn't have to go home. As I write this, too, I can remember exactly what it was like to come home to a completely different house on my first long break from college, or what it was like to sleep in the large upstairs bedroom in my aunt's house on Christmas Eve. Sometimes these memories get mixed up with their triggering events to such an extent that I completely lose track of chronological order and get caught in a network of associations.

Some particularly vivid dreams have even gotten caught in this vast network. One example is the one I had about holding hands in the main corridor of my high school. I had a very close female friend named Melinda, and one day as I was walking down the hall with her, I brushed up against her hand accidentally. I made a joke about holding hands with her, and she teased me, saying that I didn't even know how to hold hands properly. I took it as a challenge and promptly placed her hand in mine, but it didn't seem as platonic as the joke should have implied. I woke up on what seemed to be the next morning almost in a panic, wondering how I would tell my girlfriend what I had done, what I had felt? Should I even tell her? I can picture that event as clearly as any that ever happened in the real world - in fact even more clearly. The real world has always had difficulty competing with the creations of my mind.