Do you remember flying? I do.

When I was very young, before I was five, I could fly. I remember clearly. I could close my eyes, think “up in the air” and fly. I never doubted that I could. After I started school, I couldn’t fly any more. The magic went away.

These memories go back at more than 60 years. That’s a lot of years. Memories usually fade, become dim and gauzy over long decades, yet these remain clear. I remember where I was, how I felt, what I saw. How I flew. I have no idea of the physics or the scientific probabilities involved. I just know it happened and have never made an effort to apply scientific analysis to what clearly won’t lend itself to that kind of scrutiny. I could never prove the veracity of my memories.

Normally I’m very logical. If anything, I tend to be overly analytical but I recognize when something defies logic.

I have been touched by the inexplicable several times, leaving our Pastor to ask me if I required a picture ID before accepting that I had been “God-touched.”

Thing is, I never doubted I had been touched, though lacking a picture ID, I can’t say which entity was involved. I have been twice restored to life and issued an explicit (and apparently one-time only)  invitation to dedicate my life to a particular path. At the time of the invitation I was nine months pregnant and could not accept … and no further invitation ever came my way. I wish I could have said yes.

I am not ungrateful to have gotten my life back. I am extremely grateful. I acknowledge were it not for timely intercessions, I would be dead twice-over. When something with the power of life or death pops into your psyche, tells you to go forth and live, asks nothing of you, then departs, it doesn’t allow time for a post-intercession Q & A period.

You couldn’t anyhow because “struck dumb” sums up your verbal abilities of the moment. Anyway, I would have had just one question: “Why me? I’m not so special … so why me?” But you don’t get to ask so you may never have an answer. Maybe there is no answer or none we could understand.

I am far from ungrateful. It’s just that I want to ask for my magic back, even if for only a few minutes. I want to fly, to feel that swoosh of wind as I take off, feel those moments of freedom, of being unbound from the earth.

Do you have memories of flying? I know others remember similar things. Most of us don’t talk about it lest people think we are nuts. I don’t care what anyone thinks, because I remember flying until one day I couldn’t.

And for all these years, I’ve been wondering why the magic went away.

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