A story for you all


Miles and Miles Above
=====================

My boy's crying alerted me that he had somehow
wriggled his way out of the net, a supposed
impossibility which seemed to happen an awful lot
lately. I turned my head and saw him floating in the
centre of the room, his cries increasingly shrill and
hysterical, his furious arm movements sending his
little body spinning. Little globular tears flew from
his eyes, sent in all directions by the boy's jerky
revolutions.

I kicked at the console, propelling myself to him,
managing to intercept the baby just as his head swung
facing forward and his body was parallel to mine. I
scooped him up in my arms as my inertia carried me
past, the two of us drifting towards the far wall, my
trajectory deflected slightly. With an eye towards the
approaching surface as we flew, I began stroking his
hair, whispering to him in a vain attempt at calming
him down. My efforts at soothing him only fuelled the
boy's rage, and by the time my Velcro shoes were
firmly on the wall/floor/ceiling, he was wriggling so
hard that I was afraid I was going to drop him back
into zero-G free fall.

Kneeling, resting his body on my legs, I looked down
at him and gently asked him what exactly he thought he
was doing. His sobs hiccoughed into silence and he
stared up at me, into my eyes, meeting my gaze with a
curiosity and an unfocused, uncertain kind of warmth.
I smiled at him and scratched his head. He waved his
arms and seemed to forget that he had ever been angry.
Then he yawned, and, as always, I saw his mother there
in his face when he did that, and I suddenly
remembered the way she had looked on Sunday mornings,
sleepy and smiling. I remembered her voice and her
smell and her temper.

Eventually, I stood up and walked along the surface to
the big window, holding my son close to my chest and
angling him towards the glass. Below, hanging
suspended in space, was a blue planet not all that
different from the one we had left behind. Thinking of
this, my mind saw the fire as we had seen it from
space, the boiling seas and splintering mountains
blossoming into space. This memory didn't last.
Instead, I remembered home the way it had always been
to me, not the way it had looked in the end. I
remembered it green and blue and covered in milky
swirls.

I moved us closer to the glass. My son, eyes wide,
moved his head left and right in abrupt little
twitches, fascinated by everything. I knew he couldn't
see well enough yet to notice the planet, but it was
entirely possible that its bright, soothing colours
registered with him somehow. I lowered my head and
smelled his hair as he gurgled. He smelled warm and
clean.

I knew that the others would be coming soon, but I
hoped they stayed away for a few minutes more. "Not
long now," I said, to the boy and to myself. He
reached out with a pudgy arm and pressed it to the
glass.