The autumn afternoon was sunny and crisp. I was playing outside with my one and a half year old son, Ocean, when we heard the hum of an engine overhead.

“Look! It’s a biplane,” I told him, crouching down and pointing to the speck of aircraft skimming through the sky. By accident one day while driving down an unfamiliar road, I’d discovered a small airport on a hill just a few miles from our house. Ever since, I’d taken special note of the single-engine planes which would often buzz overhead, criss-crossing the sky as though sending me a message. Watching with my son, my heart twisted with an old ache.

As a young child, I was convinced there had been a time when I could fly.

One day, I simply remembered; I used to be able to fly. The memory came to me all at once, clicked on as though my brain had tuned into a station which had previously been static. It felt like a dream, yet there was a clarity to it I couldn’t deny. In my mind’s eye I could see the world floating beneath me. I couldn’t go very high or fast, and not outside of the house, details which made me believe firmly in the memory.