MAYBE ONE DAY I WILL WRITE A NOVEL THAT IS MEMOIR-ISH ABOUT GROWING UP.

HERE ARE SOME NOTES FROM ONE CHILDHOOD MEMORY.  IF YOU ALSO WOULD LIKE TO SHARE YOURS, PLEASE DO.  And considering I have written two soft, science fiction novels -- this would be a stretch for me to ground a book in the all-too-real world. I think I will try to develop the "memoir" and sci fi book at the same time.

Some notes  by Dwight Okita

I remember when I was little my father carrying me to bed. After I had fallen asleep in front of the TV. After it was late, too late for a boy like me to be awake. He carried me gently in his arms, climbing up the stairs toward my room, carefully laying me down in my small bed so as not to wake me, pulling the covers over me, tucking me in. 

I loved that. 



The whole ceremony of it. It was a ceremony that whispered to me: "This is my father and he will always take care of me. I am loved and I am safe. And also that I should go to sleep and not wake up in the middle of the night and start exploring the whole darned house." 



What my father did not yet know was that I was a light sleeper, so I was awake for whole ceremony. I didn't want to tell my father I was awake and prevent him from carrying out his fatherly duties. 

And I especially I didn’t want to miss the magical feeling of flying through the house. 

Flying up the stairs like Casper the Friendly Ghost, and finally landing in bed. I never told him, not once, that I was awake. 

And then one day, my father stopped carrying me. Was I too heavy, too old, too something? How did he calculate the night that he would choose instead to walk me to bed...instead of carrying me there? I missed My Days of Flying, though I never told him, not even after I became a young man. 

I never told him what he had given me, and what he had taken away.