I would like to believe it started with a vision at the age of 8, it was the latest my mother had let me stay outside the street light had been on for more than two hours and all the stars shined brightly in the Florida’s clear sky. I looked up to the sky and saw planes pass by and imagined what it would look like looking out of one of those small windows of the airplane and I woundered where was the plane heading to in this huge world.
I wanted to get on one of the planes so i closed my eyes and made a wish from the depths of my soul so deep to where I could invision it as a shooting star flew across the sky I wish to travel the world all my life.
That winter I had my first plane ride to Winsconsin, it was the furthest I had been away from florida besides our yearly summer routines to good ol’e Alabama to see my mom’s side of the family. Winsconsin was very first white christmas in Appelton, Winsconsin. I experienced everything I had saw in the movies and dreamed doing myself. I went sleding down huge hills, sled into a tree and smashed my face; I think my mother cried more than I did after seeing the damage that was done, I recall her crying out to my stepfather “look what you’ve done to my baby’s face, she is not a little boy, you can not be playing with them like they are little boys”, she cried out as she put a warm wash cloth on my scraped up faces, and my sister giggled in the corner of the bathroom as she watched me let out little sobs.
My stepdad played lots of pranks one that I will never forget was him daring me to put my tongue on a light pole, I took him up on his dare curious to what would happen besides feeling lots of coldness on my tongue. In my small mind I never knew that it wouldn’t be worse than feeling cold on my toongue but more like an extreme burn, that would last until I was able to rip my tongue from being stuck to a wooden iced light pole, again my mother cried more than I as she yelled at my stepfather for daring me to do such a thing! My sister just sat in the back ground giggling to herself. I enrolled in the snowball army and encountered more snowball wars than the US military could engage in ever, ok I’m exaggerating there.
On Sundays I daydreamed layed across the floor the sunroom and looked out the windows of two huge french doors that lead out into the wilderness that was less than 20 steps away from my aunt and her husband’s huge mansion. I imagined what it would be like to own my very own house out in the country side to experience a white christmas every year for the rest of my life.
1987 was the best Christmas of my life, on the plane ride back to sunny Florida looking outsidee the airplanes window into the clear blue sky, I knew in my heart that magic did exist no matter what my mother, father, grandmother, sunday school teacher, or preacher said. I knew it in my heart and mind and nothing would change that belief not even now at the age of 33 that I could create a life of magic for myself.
