Irene
"Dancing in the Air"
From the time that I was a little girl, I believed that I could see the light. The bubbles of light that surround us as we move through the world like lanterns. Not everyday. Not everytime I tried. Sometimes only in dreams. Less and less as I got older.
I could especially see the lights of my family, my friends. As though love clarifies the vision. Sometimes at night, after the electric lights were switched off and my mother or father was slipping out the door, I looked with eyes half seeing through dreams, and they were candles whose light followed them out, all in a rush to get through the door before it closed. But whose warmth lingered in the room and settled upon me.
A quilt for the soul to complement the one the body slumbers away beneath.
In the spring of 1968, I was too young to understand the significance of the political events unfolding around me. But I had other perceptions. Another set of eyes. Like baby teeth.
When people are happy, hopeful, in love, their lights are brighter. They give the impression of glowing. Of lifting. Floating over the earth. Walking on air. They are hot air balloons in the night. Their flames illuminating the swelling fabric from inside. Filling them with heat. Lifting them to the sky. To hang among the stars. Like lanterns.
In the spring of 1968, it was as though the whole of the city was lifted into the air and went drifting lazily out over the fields of Slovakia. Apple orchards, from above, like snowfields, white with blossoms. Light shone from the darkest corners and for a time we were all creatures of the air rather than the earth.
I saw it most in my mother and father. They floated like lovers on a cushion of air. Like something of their first weeks together had been reawakened. It was infectious. Guests giggled over dinner. Talked of the brave new words appearing in the papers daily. Words people had only dared speak in the dark, alone, but that now walked the streets like citizens. I felt taller. Swollen with light. Lighter than air. That I could have flown with the pigeons that roosted on the ledge outside my window.
I had a dream one night that I floated up out of my bed. Floated out through my open window into the air above the street. Below me there were lights in the trees along the boulevard like Christmas. I turned to see my friend Marina float out of her window. She wore a long gown that hid her feet and trailed behind her like water. I wore the same gown. She came to me and I took her hand. Together we flew about the city. Over rooftops. Through parks. We chased each other between the trees. Laughing.
All around us were others. The citizens of Bratislava in their nightgowns, dancing in the warm night air lanterns, up among the blossoms, in the square while the city looked on in approval through warm yellow eyes in the buildings around us.