Flying

It was a dark night. Quiet and calm with the whisper of a gentle wind across the leaves that were softly dancing on the branches. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, a dog barked, and the eyes of a young boy followed the moon up in its steady path to join the rest of the stars. Moonlight glanced off his blue eyes, a sparkle of thought and wonder, as he stared out of his window, breath fogging the glass slightly. 

He couldn’t have been more than 10, with his roundish still baby face and his neat clothes that his mother had ironed out the day before. The boy was fascinated with the night, and the sky that turned a shade of blue he’d never seen before. He wished there was a pencil color that could capture the beauty of the night sky, yet also knew that if someone could ever recreate it, looking out his window at night would never be as special. 

Daring to smell the air instead of staying inside his room, the young boy gingerly opened the window, careful to make no sound lest he wake his parents. It was the first night he tried sitting on the roof, but not the first time he considered it, and his heart was racing. There was something about this night in particular though, that made it impossible for him to look on from a distance. 

On the rooftop, he dangled his legs over the edge, looking up at the stars and the night sky. He closed his eyes and took in his other senses, breathing deeply. He could smell the fresh grass and the bloom of the flowers that come every summertime, he could hear the crickets softly chirping, and the hoot of an owl somewhere far away, and he even tasted the night air, and the feeling of longing for something more. 

As if the realization that he wanted to see more of the night sky had changed him, the boy stood up. Quickly and quietly, he put his hands out in front of him, and his legs into a squat, before leaping into the blue. He didn’t scream. He didn’t even flinch, as he soared through the warm air, the sounds he’d heard seconds ago on his roof shifting into the rush of air that was all around him. He floated in nothingness, and yet it somehow felt like it was everything around him, and all senses were heightened. He saw below him the lights of his neighbors in the basement, watched as all throughout his town houses turned dark. He watched on as one of the streetlamps near his house flickered, and went out slowly, until not even the glow of the dead light shone. He even watched the other birds in the sky, all sizes and shapes tilting this way and that way until taking a life or death nose dive into the ground to catch their prey. 

The young boy watched in fascination at the things around him. As he drifted further and farther up, he realized how much distance was actually between the ground and the clouds, taking everything in amazement. As he thought about it more, he realized how vast the atmosphere really was. The ground only took up the smallest amount of surface area on the earth, and everything above it was air. Everything above it was his to explore. 

He eventually got tired of just moving up, and glided forward. The wind blew his hair back across his eyes, and he laughed for a moment as he adjusted the bangs his mom so often worried were too long. The boy laughed more as he felt the rush of wind hit him, surprised at how loudly it sounded, almost as if he were on the outside of a plane, yet more subtle. The wind moved past him, and yet it also seemed to stay with him, a hold on every part of his body that cushioned him in midair and kept him from falling into the houses and streets that were only tiny specks far below him. 

He swam through the clouds that were approaching, feeling colder as he passed through them. It reminded him of a trip his family took into the mountains, where the air got thin and cold, except the air around him was cold and dense. It felt like he was moving through water that wasn’t quite water, or steam that wasn’t quite steam. It unnerved him, and he willingly dropped below the cloud level, making sure to stay away from the condensed air he had daydreamed about being fluffy and marshmallowy. 

As he floated beneath the clouds, it almost felt like swimming through a pool where he could breathe and see everything in crystal clear detail. The stars peeked out brighter now to him, but they still looked as small as ever, reminding him of the vastness the universe truly was. He was no more than a 10 year old boy, soaring through the night sky, while planets with atmospheres he knew he couldn’t even fathom if he tried existed somewhere far above him. Farther than he could go.

The thought made him happy, not sad. He knew he would never go to Mars, knew he would never get to look down and see Jupiter like he saw earth. He knew that for as long as he studied astronomy, that there would always be stars he didn’t know, planets he never could know, universes he couldn’t imagine. The thought was nice in a way, because it reassured him that the adventure wasn’t over. It could never be over, as long as there was the sky. It was a constant reminder that although every person must grow old, must grow and change and live, that there would always be more to discover, and more to see. The things he’d already seen in his lifetime far outmatched his grandparents, yet as he considered it more, it seemed less objective than that.

His grandparents had been looking at the night sky for far longer than he had, even if he was more fascinated with it than they had ever been. Looking around at the stars had been something people had done since humans first walked the earth. He was flying, but the only new experience he had was seeing the sky from a new perspective, and the experiences one had mattered when comparing knowledge, but it seemed different to him now that he had seen the things he’d been seeing for 10 years in a different way. His grandparents had never and would never see the sky the way he was seeing it, but that didn’t mean they didn’t understand it.

Perspective is crucial, but only when you consider how it affects the way you see things, and not the way they are. Something can exist and be seen differently while still being the same as it always was. The young boy realizes this as he comes back, the light of the sunrise directing him back to his open window. He lands softly on the roof, the pressure of the air that had been holding him taken away, and his body lighter, yet heavier at the same time. He crawls inside his room, shuts the glass, and tucks himself into his bed cover, looking out at the same night sky he had seen every night of his life.