In my dreams I can fly, in my dreams I can float moving forwards only a few inches or feet above the floor, above the ground, moving as if bourne by a curious moment that has me driven forwards, pulling me.
As if it were gravity dragging me onwards but that gravity isn’t in the floor. Or as if I could see the floor at an angle but that the direction down were somehow in front of me.
A bit like falling down the stairs.
I can tell you the story, but the story isn’t the memory, the story is based on parents telling and retelling of a child who did not like being locked in behind stair gates, of the sound a child makes when they hit the bottom of the stairs after barely clipping them on the way down, or, depending on the telling, hitting every single one on the way down. I could tell you of the thing my Dad believes is absolute gospel about kids, they don’t cry or make a noise if they’re really hurt or something’s actually broken.
But I got challenged to talk about memory.
My second earliest memory is so old that it’s somewhat broken, twisted and folded over on itself and what’s really left is a fragment that I can access sometimes when I dream. The sensation of speed, the glimpse of moving fast past immovable stairs and the feeling I could fly.
I don’t especially remember hitting the ground.