Richard Van Ornum Listen to Richard read his essay. Read Richard's biography. Richard Van Ornum When I was little, I dreamed I was flying. Each night I was up in the air, though never over the same landscape. Sometimes, in the confusion of early morning, I would wake up thinking it was true, and I'd leap off my bed, expecting to soar out of the window. Of course, I always hit the ground, but not before remembering that I had been dreaming. I would realize that no real person could fly, and I'd collapse on the floor, crushed by the weight of my own limitations. Eventually, my dreams of flying stopped. I think I stopped dreaming completely. After that, my earliest memory is of learning to count to one hundred. After baths my mother would perch me on the sink and dry me as I tried to make it to one hundred without a mistake. Whenever I got lost, she'd stop me and make me start all over again from the beginning. I never got bored and I never got frustrated, though I think maybe she did. I'd just keep trying until I got it right or my mother got bored. I had to be lifted up onto the sink. An accident with a runaway truck when I was four had mangled my left leg, leaving scars that stood out, puckered white against my skin. Looking at the largest of my scars in the mirror, I imagined that it was an eagle. It wasn't fair, I thought. I had an eagle on my leg but I couldn't fly. I could hardly walk, and the crutches hurt my arms. Years later, in Venice, I had the closest thing to a revelation I can imagine. Sitting on the rooftop of the Cathedral of San Marco, I wasn't sure what life had in store for me. I was up on a ledge, in between the winged horses that overlooked San Marco square. To the left, the Grand Canal snaked off into the sea, where the sun cast long, crimson, afternoon shadows across the city. Below me, in the square, pigeons swirled away from the children chasing them and swooped down onto a tourist who was scattering dried corn. Somewhere in the square a band was playing Frank Sinatra. It was "Fly Me to the Moon", I think. Up on the roof of the Cathedral, it seemed to me the pieces of my life suddenly fell together. I realized that everybody is born with gifts, but we all run into obstacles. If we recognize our talents and make the best of them, we've got a fighting chance to overcome our obstacles and succeed in life. I knew what my gifts were: imagination and perseverance. And I also knew what my first obstacle had been: a runaway truck on a May morning with no compassion for pre-schoolers on a field trip. But I knew that the obstacles weren't impossible. They could be overcome. I was proof of that, walking. That night, for the first time in years, I dreamed I was flying. I soared through the fields of Italy, through the narrow winding streets of Venice and on beyond the Grand Canal, chasing the reddening sun across the sea. I woke up sure that it was true.