My childhood dream ( personal story)

The British airship R-100 over Toronto - 1930

"The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal." "It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals… and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not someone who normally remembers his dreams, the number of times this has happened in my life I can count on one hand - and I am 48 years old now.

When I was about five years old, I told my Mother about I dream I had experienced the night before. She went white as I started talking, and she kept mentioning that story until the day she died. She told me I had totally shocked her with my calm detailed description of it, coming from such a young child.

I told her that I had been standing on Dufferin Terrace in Quebec City.I said that I was standing in this really large crowd of people, and I was very small - perhaps as young as five years old. I could remember holding someones hand, and looking up through a small circle in the crowd at the sky overhead. I could see ( and still can, the memory is that vivid ) the outlines of hats on the heads of the adults framing my view of the sky , as I stared up in wonder through that vast crowd from my child's height perspective.

I told her that I figured it was late afternoon, by what I saw. That photo I posted above is one I found on the Internet, and cropped it to about the size and perspective of what I remember seeing. If you can imagine that image, as it would be seen through a crowd by a very small child, you would be imagining exactly what I saw.

Up there, not very far above, was something that filled me with wonder and amazement. It was a little like seeing a UFO, in the type of emotion it brought to me. It floated and hummed above me, and there was this feeling of electric excitment in the adults around me.

I described an airship, ( in 1962, not a common thing for a child to know of. ) Remember there was no History Channel at that time to talk about such things. Canada also had not had Goodyear blimp visits either. There was simply nothing in my life experience that could account for what I was describing to her.

I told her about seeing the shape, of hearing the engines "humming" , and of it's reflecting the sun.

Here is the fascinating thing about that dream.

It had actually happened, exactly as I described it.

In late July 1930, the British airship R-100 had made a trans-Atlantic flight to Canada. It had passed over Quebec City, and about 40,000 people had turned out to see it - on Dufferin Terrace.

Both my parents had been there, as young adults.

The scene I was described was perfect in every detail. Neither of them had ever talked about it to the family, and there had never been any media mention of it during my lifetime.

I guess that is why I have never feared death. I wonder what I will remember from this time around ?