Fairy floss in the sky

This morning I flew from Barcelona to Paris. Looking out the window, the clouds looked like mountains of white fairy floss rolling for miles across the sky. It made me think of my grandparents. My grandpa ‘Paba’ was the first person who ever taught me about clouds, one afternoon in the garden.

I was probably about nine years old. An age when I was very involved in gymnastics and circus classes. I loved flipping my body around on trampolines and twirling on the trapeze, and I often wore a t-shirt that said acrobat me across the front. I had a doll with crimped blonde hair and rollerblades, kneepads and a pink helmet. I listened to music by Frente, Girlfriend, The Clouds and Club Hoy on my white battery-powered boom box, which I carried with me everywhere.

I went to a school in the street next to my grandparents. I went to their house before and after school most days. I loved spending time with my grandparents. In the mornings Grandmere and Paba would read the newspaper in bed with a cup of tea and white bread with butter. I would squeeze in between them and read the comics, laughing even when I didn’t understand the jokes.

I spent many hours hiding in the tiny cupboard underneath the stairs, where Grandmere kept her knitting. I asked once if I could eat my dinner in there, and she replied that I could have a biscuit, but that was all.

I saw Grandmere and Paba as the wisest people of all, safe in the knowledge that being old meant knowing everything. Being old meant having all the answers to the many questions that plagued me (the outcomes of this theory were mixed - for example, one time I boldly sat upon my grandmother’s lap and asked “Grandmere, what’s a fuck?”). I was at an age where I took everything my grandparents said as true and noble, as most of us do with all of our family until we reach puberty, realize that even our parents are humans, who make mistakes, and we suddenly begin to doubt.

One afternoon I was in the garden, swinging on the loveseat and drinking lime cordial. I was watching Paba pull dead leaves off a tree and throw them into the neighbour’s yard. I asked Paba if he had ever touched the clouds when he flew planes. He stopped pulling at the tree for a moment and looked at the sky, the clouds were thick and fluffy that day, they looked like cotton wool, fairy floss, snow.

Paba explained to me that you couldn’t really touch clouds, because they are made of gasses and if you touched them they would feel like air, not like fairy floss. He then told me that he had flown through the clouds though, and that it was lovely. He said that when you fly through the clouds the aeroplane shakes a little bit because the air changes, and that it is harder to see for a moment.

I remember being so amazed by the idea that my grandpa could fly a plane, and sitting on that swing imagining him flying something resembling the Wright brothers’ wooden bi-plane, wearing a brown leather flight cap and goggles, flying loop-de-loop through holes in the clouds.

Paba went back to his leaves, and I went back to my cordial.