My mother asked me to go skydiving with her in the beginning of August, and I suspect her decision to do this came as a bit of a surprise to the both of us. I had spent the entire summer seeking out anyone who would willingly throw him or herself out of a plane with me. It didn’t even cross my mind to admit to my mother that I had any intention of skydiving, much less ask her to plummet alongside me.
The watershed moment in my mother’s blossoming daredevil career was inspired by former President George H.W. Bush, decided to parachute out of a plane to commemorate his 80th birthday. For some reason, she saw fit to equate herself and her values with that of every other aging individual in her quest for a renewed zeal. She, too, desperately needed a thrill and could somehow sense that feeling in me as well.
After a delay due to inclement weather, my mother and I set out on the two hour drive from our comfortable urban environment to the heart of rural Missouri, where skydiving serves as both a means of infusing adrenaline into an otherwise pulseless lifestyle and of tracking down cows that have wandered off one’s property.
As we pulled up to a grassy field, we were greeted by an onslaught of divers from above. One audacious individual made a barefoot landing right next to our car. He hastily gathered his chute into a ball and ran straight off the field to the coffee machine.
A 10-minute training video was all that was offered to prepare us for the death-defying antics to come. Because we were both diving in tandem, our fate was more in the hands of the men fastened to our backs than our own.
As the video started, the first inklings of doubt set in, as the narrator’s appearance was anything but authoritarian. Though he was wearing a suit, it was hard to respect his lack of proper grooming. A dingy beard dribbled down the bottom of his chin and rested in a quaint bushel on the tabletop that he was leaning against. My mom dropped onto one elbow next to me and asked, “Do you suppose he ties it in a bow behind his neck to hold it back when he jumps? Or does he wrap it around one suspender?”
“As we all know, America is a ‘sue-happy’ society,” the narrator told us, and it showed in the paperwork we had to fill out afterward. It covered every conceivable situation and every conceivable bodily injury; every sentence ended with the qualification “may result in serious harm to one’s person, or death”.
After a time, a clear theme emerged. They were trying to convince us of the absurdity of fearing our own deaths by presenting it so frequently, with undue ease. I found myself genuinely surprised that they didn’t have us waive our right to sue with giant X’s drawn in crayon.
It was not long before they had whisked us away to a changing room (which was, incidentally, still out in the open air) and outfitted my mother and I in matching buckle-riddled jumpsuits. As our tiny plane neared 20,000 feet, my tandem buddy offered a few final warnings. “Don’t worry if your contact lenses pop out during free fall,” he remarked with a smirk, “When we reach the ground they should be suctioned to the inside of your goggles.” I wondered what else should I expect to be jostled out of its rightful place by the end of this trip.
Though the training video had advised otherwise, I threw caution to the wind and opened my jaws wide as I plunged out of the cabin. “Oxygen will force itself into your pores so rapidly and forcefully that there is no need to inhale,” the video had explained. Completely forgetting about my temporary gills, the force hit me like a punch in the gut. Although I was desperately trying to breathe, the force of the wind rendered me incapable. Authentic fear seized me. After dropping several thousand feet in five seconds, we reached terminal velocity and the chute was opened. Here was the feeling that I had been waiting for.
You don’t fall, you don’t float; you are in a state of effortless suspension, trapped between here and there. For once, when confronted with the ineffable beauty of the patchwork quilt below, the thrill simply was.
The expression on my mother’s face mere moments before she dove from the plane is by far the most enduring image of the adventure. Never once have I seen her look quite so wide-eyed and animated without makeup. She has vowed to go again. In fact, she’s currently working towards her skydiving license. I, however, will not skydive again in the near future; the residual thrill will suffice for now. I have grown rather fond of the manner in which oxygen enters my body while firmly planted here on the surface of the earth.
