Learning How to Fly

The old man sat on the end of the couch strumming his favorite guitar.

The kid was visiting today and the guitar was a good buffer, even if his fingers had to remember the chords because his memory often forgot them. His only great-grandchild was playing with his cars on the floor by the coffee table, the sculptured carpet creating off-road terrain.

The old man grinned a little looking at the hodgepodge fleet of vehicles, from an assortment of Matchbox cars, Happy Meal toys, a VW bus and a wooden replica of a Ford Model A. The little boy was happily crashing them into each other, spinning them around and flipping them over. Then he looked up at the old man and said “Great grandpa, can you tell me a story?”

The old man’s heart stopped for a second, but the child continued “Grandma says that when you were younger, you learned how to fly. Tell me how you did it! – please?”

The old man looked at his fingers on the neck of the guitar, the thought of flying triggering an euphoric feeling and some distant memories.

“Sure” he said, fingering another chord. “The first thing you need is a really fast boat. The one I had could go faster than the wind – about a hundred miles an hour – skimming over the water like a giant golden bird.”

A female voice came from the kitchen where she was getting lunch ready “Mike” the old lady said admonishingly.

Great grandpa Mike caught the little boy’s eye. “Well, maybe not a hundred, but I got it up to seventy miles an hour one morning when the lake was smooth as the glass on that coffee table. And because it was a jet boat it had lots and lots of power.”

The little boy, Damian was his name, paused in his play and asked “How can a boat help you fly? And why would it need to be fast?”

“Well now, when you learn to fly over the water like I did, the boat helps you get off the surface and up in the air. If its not fast enough, you can’t fly.”

Damian thought about that for a bit and then asked “What do you do after you have the fast boat?”

The 85- year-old man said, “You get a long ski rope, about 75 feet long, and hook it to the boat. You float in the water with big, flat skis on your feet and grip the bar of the giant kite floating on the water with you. When you’re ready, the driver of the boat gives it the gas and the boat goes really really fast and then you skid on top of the water with your skis, then tip the nose of the kite up into the wind and … WHOOSH … Up you go until you are flying!”

The memory became clearer and clearer in Mike head, like it was yesterday, that feeling of soaring through the sky over the lake.

“There’s nothing like the freedom of flying up in the air, using the kite to go up and down and side to side. The feel of the wind on your face and the view of everything below. And then, when you reach the end of the lake, the boat slows down and you glide back to the water, using your skis to make a smooth landing.”

The little boy jumped up and grabbed the old man’s hand, “Great grandpa, Great grandpa, when I get big enough will you teach me how to fly.”

As he gazed into the child’s blue eyes, eyes the same color as his daughter’s and his granddaughter’s, he promised “When you’re old enough, I’ll teach you how to fly.”