Posted February 17, 2003

One day in high school, I was one with the Universe, and it was watching me for a cue.

I was eating lunch with my friends at one of the picnic tables between the old building and the new. There were casual drifts of leaves we didn't notice in the corner, by the feet of the picnic table, to the side of the ramps. Then I felt a draft. Movement caught my eye as a leaf broke away from the piles here and there, and an expansive conceit bubbled up in my heart. Was it the sweet fire of youth, or just the hormones, the way whims took on their own exuberant life in those days, dragging you along with them? I stepped away from the table. I gestured to the ramp.

"Fly, little leaves!" I cried. My friends laughed. "Find your freedom!"

Passersby shook their heads and laughed in derision.

There were quite a few of them, because our sunken patio was just below a center of traffic. The old building was behind us, the new building above us, on the other side of a sharp drop-off, and a sidewalk ran past it, beginning at the Learning Center, spinning off a ramp that curved down to us. There was a long, boring, flat lawn of half-dead grass punctuated by bare spots, between the new building and another sidewalk, so that there was nothing for hundreds of yards to block the wind as it swept in from the playing fields across Oakland. Except there was no wind that morning, only a few isolated breaths of breeze.

But that lazy, fitful whiff squared its shoulders at my exhortation, and at its urging they skittered toward the ramp. "That's it!" I cried. "Fly - that way! Escape!"

Nancy and Beth smiled nervously. Other students noticed the spectacle, and lingered on their ways to class. The breeze kept picking up as I exhorted the leaves, urging them on with expansive gestures, my hair blowing into my face.

Soon there was a mocking but somewhat perplexed crowd. Absorbed with the plight of the leaves, I'd noticed my audience too late to just blush and sit down. Besides, I was on a roll now. I ground my teeth and encouraged the leaves, some indeed blowing up the ramp, more making bewildered loops as gusts eddied in corners. Now and again a shred of wind-blown debris hit my cheek or made me blink my smarting eyes.

With nervous laughter, a few students threw coins. Embarrassed to the core of their beings, Beth and Nancy jumped up and gathered the change.

The wind continued to increase, deflected when it struck the building into swirling, stinging columns of air. I was thoroughly into it now, riding the power of the atmosphere like a high, my compatriots the leaves swirling around me, their dry sharp edges making me squint, urging them on with the ever-more-expansive gestures of a maenad.

The laughter had stopped. Some of the onlookers were slinking away, like curs whipped by Zephyrus.

"Ruby, call off your friends!" cried an older boy I'd always admired for his glamorous eccentricity. I thought he was playing along. Years later I found out that, at that instant, he sincerely believed I was a witch.

I laughed, flung my arms wide, and chanted "Be free!" one last exuberant time. I had half a sandwich to finish, and my voice was getting tired.

As I sat back down at the table, the wind died.

Even I was impressed.

I confess I tried it again a few days later, but the magic never returned, the universe never once again looked to me for its cue. Does everyone get a day like that, one day out of all their days on this earth when even the forces of nature know how special they are?

Everyone ought to.

By Ruby Jung. All rights reserved to the story. I made the background and you are welcome to copy it and use it.