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The Ghoston the Staircase I've seen a ghost. The sentence throws suspicion on my credibility immediately . One either believes or doesn't believe. There seems to be little room for an in-between stance. "You think you saw a ghost," someone says. "You're making it up," says another. "You believe you saw a ghost, and that's the important thing," another says in a patronizing tone. Or, "I've seen one, too. I see them all the time." And then I doubt your credibility, and wonder about your sanity. Or, "I wish I could see one." But that's not something to wish for. Don't wish for that. Even though it was one of the defining moments of my childhood , it was not a pleasant defining moment, and has thrown the rest of my life into turmoil, made me doubt myself, my perceptions, my memories and beliefs. And I wonder what about that simple statement threatens some of us so much (and I'm including myself here because I'm threatened, too), why we want to dismiss the seer so immediately. I suppose such a statement backs us against a wall, makes us stop and consider limitless possibilities, and we're used to limits; the supreme comfort ofthe material world is that it does not demand anything but our tangible bodies creating a tangible wake ofcause and effect around us. I've seen a ghost. Or, I think I saw one. No, I'm sure ofit. There I am, doubting myself again, wondering whether even the text of my own life is something I can agree on. And, I have a witness, someone else who was there as well. My older brother,Jonathan. Jonny and I agree on so little these days, it's amazing we still agree on this, that we both saw a ghost when I was five and he was ten. This was 1963 and we were living in Athens, Ohio. We lived our first year in Athens in a rambling broken-down home that was over a hundred years old. It had bricks missing from its foundation, and seemed to sag everywhere. Athens impressed me from the start. In fact, I recall the moment I 29 30 Nola set foot in Athens as a kind ofquasi-religious experience. My parents and the rest of the family had gone ahead while I stayed with Ida in Long Beach, and then, when things were set up, Ida and I took the train down from New York to Columbus, and then we took a Greyhound from Columbus to Athens. When I stepped out ofthe bus, my grandmother right behind me, I stood in front of the Greyhound station for a moment, wondering where I had landed. "Robin, this is your new home," Ida told me. Nothing around me looked familiar. My family could tell me a thousand times where I was going and how much I'd like it when I arrived , but until I experienced it myself, I could not know. I had no real expectations at five, or hazy ones at best. There was a tree planted in the sidewalk, not unlike trees planted along sidewalks in Manhattan, so I don't know why this particular tree seemed suddenly so remarkable, but I looked up in its branches and saw the sun sparkle through it. Certainly I'd seen the sun glitter through trees before, but this time was different. This time the light seemed to lift me up through the branches and the green was ofsuch a beauty as I'd never experienced, and all I know was that I was going up and up through those branches without a scratch. What does a fiveyear -old know or need ofecstasy, but five-year-olds know much more than we sometimes assume, more than they can communicate. The problem is communication, that's all, and the long forgetting and learning ofour lives. I do not remember the breaking of that dream, the moment at which Ida called my name and pushed me ahead ofher, the moment at which I fell back down and saw that tree as only another tree, or noticed the dog running on the sign in front of the station, and the familiar concrete sidewalk beneath my feet. What I remember is that feeling, although only dimly now. What I remember is that light through the branches burning into me, engraving itselfinside me. That Halloween, I was a ghost. The previous...

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