Light and shadows

Me, Mama and our family car

While I was looking for something to write about today, I ran across this picture. It was obviously taken by Daddy, since many of our photos from that era also have our family car in the background. I think Daddy was as proud of that car as he was of his wife and daughter. What really stands out to me, though, is that cheeky grin on my face, as if the world revolves around that magnificent person. And indeed, at that time of my life, I was as privileged and as well loved as anyone could ever be.

I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like without having been so well loved as a child, but you can always take on the feeling of having been a happy child, even if you weren't. Remembering what I wanted to do when I was young, I realize that now, since I have become an elder in the twilight of my life, I've done everything I wanted, and then some — many things I  never expected to accomplish. Take skydiving, for example. 

It came into my life in a coincidental sort of way when a friend decided he wanted to make a skydive and had learned about tandem skydives, where you are strapped to the front of an instructor. He asked me to join him in the adventure. We called the local Drop Zone and made reservations for the event in a few weeks' time.

This is how it works: an instructor is wearing an oversized parachute, and the two of you jump out of an airplane hooked together (passenger in the front), with the instructor opening the parachute at the right time and guiding you both to a safe landing spot. For my friend, it was enough to do it just once, but I was most definitely hooked on the sensation of freefall. Why? Well, it's almost impossible to describe what it feels like to be in freefall, feeling gravity pulling you towards the distant earth, with the rushing of wind in your face and feeling pretty much unmoored from reality. If nothing were to happen at this point, you would plummet to the earth and die. 

My mind must have realized that on some level, because I became paralyzed and unable to process anything for a few seconds. Then, after what seemed like a lifetime, I saw the instructor's hand appear in front of my face, and he was pointing toward the ripcord (which I was supposed to activate). Oh! Right! I managed to make my hand grab ahold of it and gave it a strong pull, and suddenly with a whump! we were no longer in freefall but under a brightly colored parachute. My instructor released the brakes and we took a few wonderful turns under the canopy. He also pointed out our landing area, which looked quite far away, but we made some nice sashays back and forth until we landed, unhurt and right where we were supposed to be. I was transformed! I knew I had to do that again, so in another couple of weeks, I repeated the experience (my friend was not interested), and after that I signed up to take a weeks-long course to do it on my own.

The rest is history: I made several hundred skydives during my first year. I learned how to control my body in freefall, open the parachute on my own at the right time, and ended up buying my own gear within a few months. Now I am retired from skydiving, but before I finished, I had accumulated more than 60 hours of freefall time, 50 seconds per skydive (you get a certificate from the US Parachute Association for every 12 hours), had become a freefall instructor and taught more than a thousand students, and set a couple of freefall records before hanging it all up. That little girl in the picture didn't know she would do such a thing, but it is one of my lifetime achievements. 

After landing

Along the way I met my life partner (who also has thousands of jumps) and although we don't skydive any more we have a very definite vocabulary that only skydivers share. Between us we have more than 8,000 jumps out of airplanes and many of them with each other. Just thinking about it, I can recall times when we held hands in the air and looked at the horizon and ground as we fell. We were definitely bonded by skydiving, and we ended up getting married in freefall. That was almost thirty years ago now. It's part of our journey together and always will be.

The things we do during our lifetimes shape who we are today, and I am happy to say that I never did end up living another person's life, just my own. Some people never break out of the mold that someone else puts on their life, with women often becoming wives and mothers and never finding out what they wanted to do with their own lives. I wonder if having lost both of my children contributed to my personal path opening up my future. Certainly taking up skydiving changed my life's trajectory, and I look over at my dear husband and am glad things turned out the way they have.

One thing that I never did was attend college long enough to graduate from anything more than a community college in California. I am convinced, however, that had I been able to matriculate at a good college, I would have become a scientist. Maybe a theoretical physicist who discovers the mystery of quantum mechanics. Who knows? I think my fascination with it shows an aptitude that might have taken me onto a completely different life trajectory. Maybe in another parallel universe I've figured out quantum mechanics, which doesn't allow us to make absolute predictions about the future. It only predicts the likelihoods of different outcomes to happen. It doesn't say anything about which one will happen. I love the uncertainty of it all.

In many respects, I've lived a charmed life, even though it's been filled with loss. But learning to live with disappointment, to find alternate ways to be happy, has actually helped me become a more unique individual, don't you think? As I ponder all the different directions I could have gone, other than the one path I have followed, I wonder if I could have become anyone else other than who I am today. It makes me wonder about predestination and the well-known "predestination paradox" that many science fiction stories use to great effect. For a fascinating concept, read Wikipedia's page on causal loops. I never tire of considering whether what we know as reality is, well, real. Maybe all that time in freefall has altered my sense of self. 

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. —Joseph Campbell

I hope you will have fun today, and I do believe that we are all striving to understand who we are on this beautiful ball we call Earth. I had fun writing this nonsensical post about light and shadows. I'm standing in the light and creating my own shadow, which is filled with possibilities. It's time for me to get up and begin my day, and finding my way towards happiness and joy. I wish you all good things until we meet again next week, dear friends.