DON'T FORGET TO FLY: A memoir
An eight-year-old stands shaking on the roof of her house wishing she could jump off. Fly away. Escape. Some twenty years later, I made that leap. This is a story of daring to remember my abusive past. Of daring to trust those memories. Daring to confront pain, confront my abuser and hope in happiness. But mostly, it is a story of daring to love myself, especially those lost and hurting parts. And in doing so, spread my adult wings and fly free of my past.
~
Some moments are so loud that being eight is scary. Small. And scary. But not tonight. Not here on our front lawn. This night is still, a happy kind of dark. With a big moon hanging low and soft in the sky.
My father stands beside me. The grass tickles under my feet and a breeze takes bits of my hair and makes it go all twisty in the air, but I don’t move. I am with my daddy.
His head is turned to the sky, his arms hanging at his side. I almost slip my little hand into his big one, but I stop myself. For a long time I don’t say anything.
Looking upwards, I try to see what my daddy is seeing. It’s all black paint up there.
I squint.
I tilt my head.
But all I see are sheets and sheets of black. God pegs the night from his washing line in heaven and puts His sun to bed with a kiss each night, that’s what I think anyway.
Daddy says God made the night, the stars, the whole world. Daddy says God knows everything. I don’t know about that, but I think my daddy knows everything.
I look at Daddy. Daddy looks at the skies. I look back at Daddy. The seconds get longer and my feet itch. But I don’t want to speak and say something to make Daddy send me away, I have to know what we are staring at.
So I take a big breath and say, “What are we looking for, Daddy?”
~
Taken from 'Don't Forget to Fly'
a memoir by Tabitha Bird
