There was once a boy. From the moment he was born he felt a draw towards the sky. You know, one of those kids that climb everything in sight. When he was very young it was simply a desire to get as high up towards the sky as he could. He would look at the moon for hours.
As the boy grew older, however, instead of a natural inclination he began to feel a physical draw toward the sky. It was as thought two opposing gravities were fighting for him. At first it was very vague. It seemed easier to jump up than sit down. But the older and bigger he got the stronger the upward pull fought against gravity’s downward anchor.
However, as he got older he also lost his desire to follow the pull toward the sky. Instead he began to listen to his mother’s lectures about staying on the ground, of avoiding high places. She lived in fear, she told him, of the inevitable day he lost his balance on the top of that swing set, or tree, or building and fell to his death. That was what always happened to people eventually, she told him, when they climbed into high places. The boy loved his mother as boys do and so he began to make her fear his own. When he refused even to climb to the top of the slide he saw her smile. And so, in not so very long he taught himself to fear the air. He learned to cling to the earth more and more, even as he felt himself pulled ever more strongly away from it. He convinced himself that he was crazy to imagine such a thing. Everyone knew gravity was one of those laws that couldn’t be changed, avoided, or overruled. So he convince himself that he was simply deluded
The boy grew into a sensible, pragmatic man known for his sound common sense and a terror of heights. Everyone knew he could never fly nor scarcely even bear to be above the 2nd floor in a building. What he never admitted to anyone was that the pull toward the sky was so strong now that he could barely stand it. His life was one of constant terror that someday it would become so strong he simply would be unable to deny it. He knew that that moment was close. Even lifting one foot off the ground made him feel off balance. All day he would strain trying to tie himself to the ground through willpower alone, going to bed at night exhausted from his efforts and his anxiety.
The boy—the man now—still loved his mother. She remained the loving voice of guidance and reason all through his life. Even when he could no longer remember the time in his life when he had reached with longing toward the sky and yearned for the cold whiteness of the moon she never forgot. She never stopped teaching him to stay safe on the ground. Everything she said and did was to reinforce his anchor to the Earth. But she could not live forever; and when she died he might forget.
So one day, when she was very old and about to die she called her son to her,
“My dear boy, you know I’ll be leaving you soon. So before my time here is over I must warn you. Think back to when you were a young boy. Remember that time. Remember when you were a little monkey climbing on anything and everything, always reaching for the next, higher place. Remember? I see you do. You’re smiling at the foolishness of youth. You’re laughing at yourself. You can’t believe you ever loved the sky like that. You know how foolish and reckless you were back then.
“I’m so glad that you still feel this way. But son, I want to leave you with a warning. Don’t ever let yourself become like that reckless young boy again. You are smiling again. You’re about to interrupt me, to remind me that as an adult you have always had an extreme fear of heights. You want to assure me that such terror is not something that will ever change. But my dear boy, I know your secret. No, don’t interrupt. I know the call you still feel even now to the sky. Yes. I know how strong it is and how powerless you will feel against it in the years to come. I know this because I feel it too.”
His mother then told the boy about her life. She told him of her constant vigilance lest at any moment she would be swept away to her death. Because death was what waited at the other end of that call. She knew that it would bring her to airless frozen depths of space where Man could not exist. She explained the years of suffering that suddenly became as nothing the moment she was blessed with the joy of a darling baby boy. Then she explained how all became nothing again, eclipsed by the pain she felt as he saw her new baby’s eyes fixed on the moon more steadily than on its own mother’s face. She explained her terror when she discovered that unlike her, this boy was not born with the life-saving knowledge that this sky-call was one which he must never answer. So she taught him the fear that ought to have been instinctive.
But now she was going away. She would no longer be able to constantly reinforce his fear. She warned him to be aware. She begged him to watch himself lest he begin to slip. Lastly she made him promise that even if his artificial fear escaped him he would still never answer that call, if only for her. She wept as she told him that his happiness was all that mattered to her. She told him she could not bear the thought of him dying in that frozen vacuum. Because the boy loved his mother he promised her everything she asked. And so she died.
But no matter how much the boy loved his mother the man could not stop thinking about the story she told him. Where before he had trusted his fear as good common sense he now was forced to doubt it as artificial. He had used to tell himself that this pull he felt toward the heavens was simply a delusion. Now he was forced to acknowledge its reality. And because he was now a man—known to be intelligent and independent of thought—he was compelled to distrust his mother and examine his situation for himself.
The man looked at the story his mother had told him about her life. He searched his memory of her words to find ones of happiness and didn’t find many. She had made it clear that her life was one of fear and pain. He understood this; his life was the same. But then he remembered his youth. His mother had given him back his memories of the joys of his childhood. For he could not deny, now that they were there in front of him, that the memories were joyful.
Thus all that his mother had feared came to pass not so very long after her death. The man that had grown out of the boy returned to his childhood. Just as he had learned to fear the heavens he now learned to love them again. Instead of avoiding heights he would seek them out. He would relish in the diminishing grasp gravity had on him the farther he got from the ground.
But he still never let both his feet leave the ground. His mother was still there in his mind and his promise to her still anchored his heart to the Earth. He still could hear her warning him that somehow he had been born without the instinct that would save his life. He heard her shudder at the mention of the vast frozenness of space and knew in his mind that she was right to feel so. And most of all he heard himself promise her again and again that he wouldn’t let go. He saw the relief on her face as he reassured her yet again that he would never ever answer that call.
But he could not stop himself from staring up into the sky. Sometimes at night he would climb onto his roof and lay there staring at the sky, feeling the upward lifting and the constant pull downward, until their conflict became unbearable. He would go back inside and cling to his pillows, his bed, anything that felt solid and unmoving. He was now constantly off balance. But his promise to his mother still held him.
Then one day the man woke up and felt himself pressed against his tightly tucked blankets. He couldn’t even feel the mattress on his back. That day he didn’t get out of bed. For 9 hours he lay in bed thinking about his mother’s pain-filled life. He thought about ice and cold and space and death. He thought about a young boy who loved his mother more than anything. He thought of his life of fear and then his new life of denial and struggle. And then, after those 9 hours of thinking he got out of his bed.
The man got in his car and drove to into the city. He stopped in front of the tallest building in town. 20 stories up he got off the elevator and found the service stairs. The full moon was rising as he opened the door onto the roof. As he breathed in the fresh air 21 stories above the ground—the highest he’d ever been—he felt a strange new feeling of clam confidence. The constant pain of being pulled in two directions at once was so much less up there. He felt the downward pull of gravity as lightly as a hand on his shoulder. He felt the tug to the sky as hands reaching down to pick up a fallen child. He stood for ten minutes and watched the moon rise, fascinated as always by the cold whiteness of it. Suddenly an image came into his mind of another cold and distant disk, this one of a jewel-like blue.
“That is Earth,” the man said aloud to the moon.
As the man threw himself up into the sky he called out
“Forgive me mother!”
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