Freefall

Carolyn B Healy

I was the only kid in Chicago who had never been to Riverview. It wasn’t for lack of interest, as I’d been to Kiddieland over and over and was a real fan. It was a matter of logistics. In that era before expressways, when we’d set out for the occasional visit to the relatives in Oak Park, it took forever. And forever in a 1949 Ford, with no air conditioning of course, was no picnic. And Riverview was all the way on the North Side. For all I knew that would take more than forever.

Finally, early in high school came my big chance. My best friend Leslie and I got to go. I remember that. Whether it was it a school trip, or a YMCA outing, or somebody’s brave mom who drove us there and then disappeared for a few hours I can’t tell you.

We entered the gate and trailed from ride to ride, from The Bobs to Aladdin’s Castle, doing whatever we wanted. I felt liberated, grown up, finally part of the larger world. It was delicious.

My traumatic memory begins in the line for the parachute ride, Pair-o-Chutes. Sticky from cotton candy, head spinning from the rides and the lack of supervision, I looked up. Far far above me loomed the top of the giant tower with two billowing parachutes flapping in the wind. A metal cage dangled and swung from side to side. It was filled with children. They were probably wide-eyed but they were way too far away for me to see.

The machinery clanged, the cage fell and the parachute filled with air. I couldn’t see those children’s eyes, but suddenly I sure could hear their voices – their terrified screams pierced my ears and opened my brain to the fact that I was waiting in line to do the very same thing. What was I doing here?

You could not call me a brave child, but I had been trying to change that. Every day of elementary school I’d had to pass a yard ruled by a giant gray and black barking dog, one of those muscular mountain types, who would growl at me over the fence. Luckily, the fence was made of just as giant boulders and I believed that he probably couldn’t get to me. In eighth grade, I decided that things had to change. Instead of cowering in fear and scurrying by, I would stride by, head held high and show that beast that I wasn’t scared of him. Not at all. At the same time I felt that the owners should be ashamed of themselves, terrorizing young children just trying to get to school.

Also, even though I was beside myself with panic whenever I had to go to the dentist, I kept quiet and worked on developing a steely determination to get through it with dignity. Thank God it was only twice a year. If I had a cavity and had to come back sooner, I was wracked with guilt, shame and self-recrimination over this dental failure, not to mention beset by the familiar panic. But I made it through every time and forgot about dentistry until about a week before the next checkup.

So here I was – at Riverview, in line, marching toward certain death, feeling just terrible that my mother would have to face life without me. In my final moments, how would I handle this situation, given my commitment not to chicken out of things? I would have to be brave. I could do it.

On the other hand, how had I let this happen? Part of keeping yourself safe is preventing unnecessary danger, and I’d walked right into this one. My fear told me that this is the kind of thing other people can do but you can’t.

In fact, other people even want to do this. I eyed Leslie to look for signs of weakness. She looked up too at the screaming children. And laughed. She would be no help. And since I couldn’t bear to out myself as a coward in front of her, no one else could help me either.

The line inched forward and carried me slowly to my fate. I remember laboring to keep up lighthearted chatter while my heart was beating wildly out of my chest like in a cartoon.
Maybe I’d be struck with a sudden illness. Maybe I could excuse myself to go to the bathroom and dawdle my way back and, oh well, miss the whole thing. But Leslie was too good a friend. She would loyally step out of line and wait for me. Doggone her anyway.

Or maybe there’d be a power outage, a lightning strike, or…or…. I ran out of ideas. It was going to happen. We reached the front of the line. The apparatus stopped and the gate flew open. The last occupants, faces glowing with excitement from their fall, were unstrapped and ran toward the exit stairs chattering excitedly.

We climbed in the soon-to-be-dangling basket and were secured in our seats by the bored attendant, who gave the signal with a big wave. We started up.

My terror suddenly broke apart. It was still there, but so was the entrancing and unfamiliar view, the shrinking waves from the crowd below, the silence broken only by the grinding gears. There was a bird. And white clouds against the bluest sky. And the tower which seemed to still be standing.

I looked up to watch our progress. We were almost to the top. Leslie wasn’t saying much either. Maybe she was just a little scared? I couldn’t ask.

We hit the top and the terror kicked in full force. The bottom dropped out and we were in freefall, hurtling toward the sidewalk. What if we didn’t stop?

But we did. The parachute filled with air, the gears caught, and I was …disappointed? At the end, it was not so scary, like going down in an open-air elevator. We hit bottom and clanged into place. It was over. I had lived. Despite the anticlimactic end, I nearly melted into a puddle once my feet hit blessed earth.

The rewards were rich. My thrill came not from the adrenaline rush while falling, but from the post-landing reconfiguration of my identity. I was a person who could do a thing like that after all. I could be terrified, cope with it, and live. I was a survivor. I was brave even. My fear was present and I overcame it. Again. How about that?

But then came the real kicker. It soon hit me that, to be the person I wanted to be, I would need to do this again and again. In the years since I have reenacted my parachute ride repeatedly. Each time, from parasailing off the Florida coast, to the times I’ve stuck my neck out professionally, to the day my three-year-old had heart surgery, I have found that the measure of my initial fear and dread is about equivalent to the pride and relief after completion.

Good thing I got to Riverview that day. It closed soon after and I might have been left to cower and avoid my way through life. I might have learned this lesson in another way, who knows, but certainly not so quickly or so well. What you learn in freefall sticks with you like nothing else.

CBH 03/09