When I was a child I constantly had two very distinct dreams.
One was about being able to breath under water.
The other was about a majestic flying white horse that always looked out for me.
I had those dreams so often that I came to recognize them as comforting thoughts. We had a pool in our yard and I just knew that nothing could happen to me in the pool, I’d be safe in the water. (It’s probably why I made sure that all my kids knew how to swim and were members of a swim team – water is your friend, you just need to know how to respect it.)
I didn’t learn until I was older that a flying white horse had already occurred in mythology as Pegasus. Either I was tapping into eternal symbology or I was using someone else’s ideas. In any event, my flying horse regularly took me to fantastic places in my dreams. It was my protector, it kept me safe.
Both dreams were so realistic that upon awakening, I would swear that I could breath underwater or that I could fly on the back of my horse.
One afternoon I was out playing on our swing set. It was simple with metal poles and wooden seats. Nothing like today’s complicated sets, but it got the job done. My dad has placed our swing set on a soft bank by the side of a brook that ran through our back yard.
I had learned that if you swung up high enough, there was a split second when the swing stopped in mid-air and you lifted slightly from the seat. I had to be careful to hold onto the metal side chains, but I did it again and again because I craved that feeling of momentary flying.
One time when I was trying to get that “flying feeling” I kept pushing to see how high I could go.
I have no memory of how it happened, but I next found myself sitting in the middle of the brook. Apparently, I had swung so high that I left the seat and sailed through the air to land sitting upright in the water.
To this day, I have no idea how I wasn’t injured, all I knew was that for one brief shining moment, I had flown and landed in water that had cradled me from harm.
Lesson learned – Dreams do come true.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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