(With Your Eyes Turned) Skywards

Yaebin

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

Leonardo DaVinci

There is a tree in Yaebin’s backyard.

Well, to be fair, there are many trees that line the edge of the yard of their summer home, but there is one in particular, tall and strong in the middle, not quite straight but a little crooked, just enough to be strange without being climbable, knobs that protrude out just a little too far apart, branches that strike out at odd angles. Their family has sat beneath it for picnics, lain down by its feet to see the stars, scratched both Yaebin and her brother’s heights into its bark as they grow.

Five year old Yaebin loves this tree.

She loves reading at its base, loves running her hands over the bark, loves finding little beetles that crawl around in the cracks and letting them run over her tiny fingers, loves squealing at the ticklish sensation that their wee feet make on her skin. She thinks sometimes about climbing it, looks up into the thick, dark leaves of the crown, dreams about what it would be like to sit amidst the branches one night as the rain comes crashing down in dense, dense sheets, swaying in the wind and one day she wakes up sitting on the tree with the water pouring down over her and the branches shaking and the dark expanse that stretches out around her terrifies and calms her.

The water falls into her eyes and their town stretches out before her. She can see the light of her room, can see the lights down the street, sees a car wind its way down the road, heading to the big city.

Then a gust comes and she falls out almost immediately with a shriek, breaks her arm, hobbles into the house wailing and when her parents ask for an explanation, does not manage to give one.

She still likes the tree after but something is different.

Seven year old Yaebin dreams of flying.

She reads books and comics and watches TV and wants to fly so when her parents take her to the ice skating rink in winter near her grandparents’ house in the countryside she takes to it like a fish to water, like most children utterly unafraid of falling, digs the edges into the ice, whoops with glee as she sidesteps slower adults and feels the wind in her face as it turns her cheeks pink.

They teach her to jump and spin and do turns and every moment Yaebin spends in the air is a glorious amazing moment.

Then winter melts into spring and the rink with it and Yaebin knows she is going to outgrow her skates really soon but the rink is far away on the other side of the city an