The author writes that when she was twelve, she used to love reading comic books. Her favorite was Supergirl, which used to influence her dreams. She would dream that she was Supergirl, running up to the top floor of her building and transforming into the comic book character with every...
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step, then jumping off the roof and flying. She would fly around the city, looking at people and places that interested her. She found that she could program these dreams by focusing on whatever she wanted the subject to be. She would dream about their landlord counting his money, their neighbors, her teachers and, in later years, boys she liked.
When she woke up, her mother and father would be talking quietly in the kitchen. They woke her 45 minutes after they got up, but liked to have the beginning of the day to themselves. Her mother would often try to persuade her father to take the family on a vacation to Puerto Rico, but he would say it was too expensive to fly there. Her mother would look out of the window at the alley full of garbage, then check the time on a clock which had on it "a prayer for patience and grace written in Spanish." Before she went in to wake her daughter, she said out loud, in Spanish, that she wished she could fly.
"Volar" is an essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer that discusses her dreams of flying and relates it to her mother's desire to fly to Puerto Rico with her family for a vacation. Both mother and daughter dream of flying—though one wants to fly like Supergirl and the other wants a more tangible method of flight.
Judith dreams of flying like Supergirl every night when she sleeps. She says that when she was 12, she loved comic books and this led her to a recurring dream where she could fly. In those dreams, her looks mirrored those of the hero she idolized. She imagined she could see into the lives of the people she knew—like her landlord who she imagined in an ermine coat and crown.
In the morning, she wakes and hears her parents spending the first 45 minutes of their day together. Judith stays in bed and thinks of flying to let them have that time together. They often discuss her mother's desire to return to Puerto Rico for a visit; her father says they can't afford it. When she hears that they cannot go, Judith's mother looks out the window and says, "Oh, if only I could fly."