I sat on my balcony typing away furiously trying to get on top of my project before our two-week vacation. I had my red composition notebook nearby filled with printed half-stories and two handwritten pages. On the handwritten pages were 40 titles for articles I would write. It was the cheat sheet I had created for myself to get me through this week of writing nonstop.

Normally my balcony is windy as we live on a cliff near the George Washington Bridge and I’m familiar with this weather pattern and prepare accordingly by putting my notebook with loose pages into a large empty pot. Today, the sun is shining, but I am under my shady awning, feeling blissful when a gust of wind shocks me from the free form prose spilling from my fingers.

Abruptly – almost deliberately, the wind grabbed one of the handwritten loose-leaf pages and took it to flight faster than I could reach for it. It’s so cinematic I gasp and laugh in disbelief as I’m watching my paper float further away; a blatant metaphor. The irony is not lost on me. I lean far over the railing of my balcony, scared shitless it will give out, unable to support my petite frame.

I watch the paper float up and down, left and right, like the feather drifting in the opening scene of Forrest Gump and I suspect it will land on the roof of the drugstore behind my parking lot near my building, but instead it keeps falling and lands in the parking lot, between two cars. I secure a visual.

I dart from my balcony, disregarding the fact that I’m in pajama pants and camisole, throw on my flip flops and dart past my doorman saying, “My paper flew away and I’m going to find it! If I get it, it’ll be a miracle.”

I run around my building, down the block and around the parking lot to where I thought the paper landed. I look around for something white and at first I don’t see it and then I squat down, look under the cars and there it is!

I can’t believe my luck. As if the universe taunted me by trying to take my dreams away, even little ones written down on a piece of paper ripped from a Composition notebook. No way, universe. I will run after them and get them right back.