The Story Begins Page 2

  “Yeah, I can settle for that,” he told her, looking rather disappointed.

  Settle! He’s just six years old. Seems like kids these days are growing up faster and faster, she thought.

  “Did Jesus wear a doggy thing around his neck, Mommy?”

  “Doggy thing?” she repeated, trying to figure out what he meant. Then she understood. “Honey, it’s called a collar. And no, Jesus did not wear one. It’s part of the clothing of a priest. Priests also want to be like Jesus. Just like you, sweetie.”

  “How do I become a priest?”

  She thought perhaps it was time she changed the subject of conversation. “Honey, why don’t we talk about what toys you’ve seen on TV that you’d like to have? There’s plenty of time to do other things when you grow up. And being like Jesus is one of them, okay? For now Jesus would like you to have fun and not think of such things just yet, all right.”

  “Where is he?” he asked, looking around, somewhat baffled. “I don’t see him and didn’t hear him say anything.”

  She laughed. “He’s kind of like the wind. You can feel it but you can’t see it, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus is kind of like that. He’s there but you don’t see him.”

  “I’m going outside,” he said. “I’ll be at my swing set, okay?”

  “Okay, honey, be careful.”

  “Yup, yup,” he said then ran off.

  His mother watched him and wondered where this very sudden interest in Jesus was coming from. It certainly wasn’t anything that he’d heard from them or seen on television. Then she remembered. One of their neighbors, who lived a couple of blocks away, was, in fact, a priest. Jaden never spoke to strangers so she was surprised that he had conversations with the priest.

  Outside Jaden sat on the ground, staring up into the heavens and musing over how utterly incredible it must be to walk the world unseen. He had seen super heroes with amazing abilities on television but understood quite well that such was no more than make-believe. Jesus, however, even though unseen, was real, he’d been told. He wondered if it were possible to meet him. Maybe he’d like to play on my swing set, or maybe the monkey bars, he thought. The priest was in the habit of walking by daily and Jaden, with the naiveté entitled to every child, was under the impression that the priest knew Jesus personally and could arrange an audience between himself and his new hero.

  IT was almost sundown when his mom called out to him. “Sweetie, it’s time to come in now. Be sure to bring in all the toys you have out there, okay.”

  “Okay,” he shouted back while dunking a basketball in the hoop.

  “Daddy will be home soon and we want you all cleaned up for the dinner table, okay.”

  “Okay, I’m coming, Mommy.”

  The priest ought to have passed by already but hadn’t as yet. Jaden thought he must have had a very busy day. He looked at all his toys scattered all over the yard. He disliked cleaning up after himself. As often as his mother and father had said to him that if he didn’t care to bring his toys back inside then he ought not to take them out at all, he still did; the routine was unchanging. And because he was always impatient when he had to clean up, he’d inevitably miss a toy or two, which his father would then bring in on his way into the house once home from work. And whenever queried as to whether all of his toys were accounted for, he’d answer yes, so sure of himself, until his father would teasingly prove his son otherwise; Jaden’s predetermined response would then simply be to place blame on the toy, accusing it of not being somewhere a little more obvious.

  AFTER a long day of hard work for both Mom and Dad but all too short a day of mostly play for Jaden, the family sat down to dinner.

  After dinner, and after brushing his teeth, his parents tucked him in, read him a story, and then kissed him goodnight. Having been hard at play most of the day, he fell asleep almost immediately after the light was turned off; this, despite his protestations while being tucked in, that he wasn’t tired at all, let alone sleepy.

  “HEELLOOO! Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said a voice.

  Jaden sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He was sure that he had heard something. “Who’s there?” he asked sleepily. Like many children, Jaden was afraid of the dark; however, he was a bit too tired tonight to remember that.

  “Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said the voice again.

  He was about to pull the cover off him and reach for his night lamp when he realized that he wasn’t in his room. The realization, however, did not bring with it a sense of panic or fear. He simply wondered where his parents had taken him during his sleep, and where they had gone off to. Did they have another fight and take him over to his aunt’s apartment, he wondered. But after waking up a little bit more, it was quite clear that he was not at his aunt’s place.

  His surroundings, or the lack thereof, distracted him. He was almost certain that he was outside but then it felt as though he might be inside somewhere. Observing his surroundings more intently, he realized that as far as he could tell there actually seemed to be neither an inside nor an outside. It was simply somewhere. There was light all around him but the likes of which he’d never seen before; it was a glowing twilight of sorts. He looked down to his feet and saw that he appeared to be standing on nothing at all. Seeing nothing but believing that he had to be standing on something, he decided to feel beneath him with his hands. He felt absolutely nothing, not even right beneath his feet. Yet there he was, somehow standing. Another aspect of this decidedly very different place that struck him was that as much as he believed that he was, in fact, somewhere, he really seemed to be nowhere at all; stranger still was that he felt as though he was actually everywhere. What an odd feeling, he thought. The only thing he was very certain of was the voice, which repeated its greeting. It was close. Not at all apprehensive, and fascinated by seeming to simply be floating, he mused, “Whoa! I’m like super-kid or something.”

  Greeting him again, the voice interrupted his musing. “Heeeeeeellooooooo!”

  “Mommy and Daddy always tell me to never talk to strangers,” he said.

  There was no response. Then he remembered his parents. “Where are my mom and dad?”

  There was still no answer. Just as he was about to call out for them, the voice in the dark chuckled and then spoke. “Silly boy! I am not a stranger,” it said. “But my daddy says that your mommy and daddy are right. You should not talk to strangers.”

  Then, out of nowhere, stepped forth the voice in the form of a little girl in a flowing silvery gown, who looked like she might have been five or six years old. Jaden thought the pinkish glowing light that emanated from her rosy complexion was very pretty. Like most children, full of naiveté and seeing the world as simplistically as only the innocence of a child would allow, he thought that she must be God. He remembered the priest telling him that some people believe that God is a being of light, so he simply concluded that the little girl must be God. But then he also remembered the priest had also told him that God is the Father of everyone. He decided that he must have either misunderstood the priest or the priest was wrong in what he had said because this little-girl-God just mentioned her own father and, being a girl, she obviously could not be a father. But he still believed her to be God.

  “Wow!” he said amazed, while conjecturing as to the possible whereabouts of Jesus. “You must be God!” he said. “I thought you were big and huge and lived in the sky but you’re a little girl and… dude, I’m bigger than you.” He couldn’t comprehend how it was at all possible that he was bigger than she whom he perceived to be God. But even more puzzling now that he looked upon her closely was that the little girl seemed to look like Liz, or was it Amber… actually, she seemed to look like all the girls he knew at school. In her face he saw the face of every girl that he knew, perhaps every girl that he had ever seen.

  “You silly boy!” said the sweet little girl. “I’m not God. What’s your name?” she asked as she set about creating a shiny spherical object by s
imply gesturing with her hands, then she gently blew it away and it was buoyant, just as are bubbles when created by the breath of a child.

  Jaden, however, was much too distracted by his preoccupation and didn’t hear her question. She glowed so how could she not be God, he pondered. “If you’re not God, how can you have a glowing light around you? Even when I put a flashlight beneath my chin that does not happen to me so how can you not be God?”

  “I like you. You’re nice.” She smiled. “What’s your name?” she asked again.

  “Jaden,” he answered then wanted to ask hers. However, before he had a chance to ask, again she spoke.

  “I’ll ask Daddy to make you look just like me.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. He looked around in an attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of her father. He was nowhere to be seen. What’s with all these invisible people, he thought. He hadn’t noticed that no sooner had she said that she would ask her father, Jaden had begun to glow as well.

  “Look! You’re just like me now.” She brought the fact to his attention.

  He looked at himself. “This is sooo cool,” he said. This, unquestionably, was the most marvelous event that had ever happened to him. He couldn’t wait to get back home to show his mom and dad the amazing occurrence.

  She floated over to him, took him by the hand, and then said, “We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

  He looked around and wondered what she meant. “How? I don’t see anything around us. It’s just you, me and plenty of nothing.”

  “Yaaah, and that’s all we need,” she said cheerfully.

  “Don’t you have any toys?” he asked, befuddled as to how one could possibly have fun without anything fun around.

  “No. And we are very far away from your home,” she said.

  No toys sounded absolutely boring to Jaden; he thought of all his toys and all his stomping grounds. He loved playgrounds. He also thought of all the toys he was yet to get and the many more playgrounds yet to be discovered. “I have some really cool toys we could play with,” he tried to convince her, “but we’ve got to go back to my room to get them.”

  “No. No toys. Just me and you forever and ever!” she declared.

  That sounded kind of like a rather lengthy amount of time to him. “How long is that?” he asked.

  “I dunno,” she said melodiously.

  Again he remembered his parents. He looked around. “Do you know where my mom and dad are?”

  “At home,” she said. Her voice was unmistakably farther away.

  He stopped surveying his surroundings and returned his focus to where she had been. She was no longer there.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Right here,” she said. He followed her voice. She was above him.

  “How did you get up there?”

  “Just like you,” she answered.

  That’s when he noticed that he, too, had ascended. “Totally awesome, dude! Can we-” He didn’t need to finish the question; he found himself flying alongside his new companion. As much as he loved his toys, this most certainly paled everything he had ever thought of as fun. All the toys and playgrounds in the world could never measure up to this. First he glowed, now he flew. He felt as though he were a star set in the heavens.

  She knew his thoughts for she said, “We are the brightest stars in the sky.”

  Though they flew quite a while and boredom in this activity was almost an impossibility, nonetheless it did begin to dawn upon Jaden that it mattered not how far or fast they flew, there was never anything in sight. He found this a little curious and just as he was about to ask where anything was, they both vanished in a flash of light.

  Jaden found himself in the midst of seemingly endless, glowing, globe-like objects, some cloudy, some shadowy, while some burned brightly. He reached for one then peered into it. Within it he saw swirling clouds, brightly burning spots, empty dark spaces and colorful formations. Letting that one go, he reached for another. “This almost looks like a very big marble,” he said as the little girl suddenly appeared and gazed upon the object he was holding in his hands.

  Cupped within the hands of the child lay a dark orb; peering into it, he sifted through what seemed like near countless, beautifully crafted, bright and colorful celestial formations; though he knew not when or where he had seen it before, the particular formation he now focused upon looked familiar. It was the Milky Way.

  “Peer deeper within,” said the diaphanous child with him.

  He did and recognized a world within it. “Where are we?” asked the little boy.

  “Close to home,” answered the little girl. “Not the one that lies within thy grasp, but rather the one from which you descended.

  Jaden didn’t know why but somehow what he was just told made perfect sense to him, and just as he was about to ask her another question, he heard a familiar voice.

  “Good morning, sweetheart. It’s time to wake up, sweetie,” called his mother.

  “That’s my mommy!” he said as the globes all around them began to vanish.

  “Time to get you ready for school, dear,” his mother said as she walked over to the window and drew back the curtains.

  “I’m awake, Mommy!” he said, flying towards her voice.

  “Poor sweetie, you must be really tired… just one more day and you can sleep in tomorrow, okay,” he heard her say.

  He wondered why she spoke as though he were still in bed.

  “That’s because your mommy sees you in your bed,” his new friend explained to the confounded child. Before he had a chance to ask what she meant or how she knew what he was thinking, he found himself back in his bed just as his mom started to gently pull the covers off him. Startling his mom as he did so, he jumped out of bed, looking wildly around him as though disoriented.

  “Honey, is everything all right?” she asked, alarmed by his behavior.

  He was oblivious. He looked all about his room, obviously searching for something. “Where is she, Mommy?”

  “Where’s who, sweetie?”

  “The girl I was just flying around with.”

  “There’s no one here, honey. It was just a dream, sweetie,” she assured him then kissed him. And by the looks of it, quite a vivid one, she thought, noticing that he still seemed not to be sure of what was around him.

  AT the breakfast table Jaden was quite absent-minded. He loved scrambled eggs but when his mother set his plate before him, he seemed to be far away in some daydream.

  “Honey, are you still thinking about your dream?” she asked.

  “Yeah. That was the best dream that I’ve ever had. It felt so real.”

  “I’ll say!” said his dad. “You can never get enough of your mom’s scrambled eggs but this morning you haven’t even touched them…” He paused. “Is it okay if I eat your plate, little dude?” he asked, his face betraying that he was praying to every divine being that Jaden would say yes.

  “No, no, no,” his mom chided her husband. “If you had picked up some eggs like I asked you to yesterday, you could have had additional helpings. Sweetie, eat your food. That’s how you’ll grow to be big and strong, okay, honey.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  His father was near devastated. He loved her scrambled eggs as well. He could have had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, even for in-between meal snacking.

  “So, are you going to tell us about your totally cool dream, little dude?” his father asked, still very much eyeing his son’s plate.

  Jaden recounted the tale between mouthfuls. Each time he gobbled up some more eggs, his dad’s heart sank lower. When it was obvious that the child was actually quite famished and would not be leaving any scraps, his stomach cried out in the form of a pained groan.

  “I’m sure you dreamt you were with a schoolmate, or perhaps someone at the playground,” his mom said after he had finished telling of his adventure.

  “No, she isn’t. I’ve never seen her before… but she’s really cool.”
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  “Yeah, that was an awesome dream. I wish I could fly around too,” his dad said.

  “That was a really nice dream, sweetie, but remember, it was just a dream, okay. Some dreams do feel very real; however, as vivid as they may feel, or seem, they are still just dreams. While asleep under the comfort of your covers, your imagination wanders off to a land of fantasy where all kinds of magical things are possible, things just like what happened in your dream. And you know what’s nice about dreaming?” his mom asked.

  “What, Mommy?” he inquired.

  “The land of fantasy is always there to return to as often as you’d like,” she said.

  “All right, little dude, it’s about that time,” his dad said as he got up. “We don’t want to miss the school bus.”

  Though the little girl was with him no more and he neither flew nor glowed, he still very much believed that the whole experience was as real as anything else was when he was awake.

  “YOU know, kiddo,” his father said as they sauntered to the bus stop, “sometimes what appears real is actually the dream and that which you believe to be a dream the reality. Special people have special dreams, and you’re the most special person ever,” his father said lovingly.

  “Am I really special, Daddy?” he asked excitedly.

  “If only you knew just how special!” exclaimed his father.

  “Does that mean that my friend is real too?”

  “I don’t know but she could be.”

  “It would be sooo cool if she is.”

  “Yes, that would be very nice,” agreed his father.

  Jaden certainly did hope that she was as real as he, and that he would meet her again soon.

  SLOUCHING in his seat while the bus drove its route, Jaden was very much absorbed by his adventure. It had felt so real. He was altogether unmindful of the other children.

  “Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said a familiar voice.

  Jaden straightened up. There could be no mistaking it; he was utterly certain of what he had just heard, and he was very much awake; he lay not in his bed but rather was seated in a school bus on his way to school. Attending school of his own accord was one venture he was certain he’d never have dreamt of so this couldn’t be anything other than real. Nonetheless, to be absolutely sure, he pinched and pulled on his cheek for affirmation. Inadvertently he had pinched himself a little too harshly and found himself struggling to stifle a scream.