The Path Of Least Resistance, True North

Last to Open
September 15, 2002
(first Cruse)

Back when I was skydiving in the 70’s, I developed a little bit of a reputation. After a free fall, I was always the last to open my parachute. No, it wasn’t a gutsy kind of thing, I believe in giving people their space and watching what they do. In fact, that was the greatest advice my dad had ever given to me about life. He’d say, “Turn down the volume son, watch what people do, don’t listen to what they say.” Similarly, while in free fall, when it was time to open, I felt more comfortable letting everyone else open first giving them clear air and space. This left me with the same, clear air and space. I actually think this is what is meant when people say, “remain still.”

My very first cruise was a seven day’r. I went alone. To this day it has been the best cruise I have ever taken. For the first time, in a long time, I was on my own, meeting and talking to people from all walks of life.

As well, a relative of an old flame of mine showed up to help validate my existence on planet Earth, Isadore. Isadore was a distant cousin of Celia, the hurricane that broke my heart and has left me yearning for that tropical, cyclonic push for almost 40 years.

The results of Isadore had our ship, the Inspiration, bypass our second stop and head straight for Cozumel. This meant the ship would be docked for almost 24 hours, an overnight stay in port. I ended up heading downtown with a guy I had met and two girls that he had been hanging with, we hit all the famous tourist traps. We returned to the ship, split up and went our separate ways.

I tried to find them all the next day, but had no luck. So instead, I set out on foot and just walked through the town for about five hours. I love to walk and see things that way, it is a much more honest look at a place. I was truly feeling a little lonely, yet at the same time enjoying being on my own. On my way back to the ship, I stopped at the dock side shops. I felt I just had to buy something as it was the touristy thing to do. As I was standing in a long line in one of the shops, I felt a warm embrace on my shoulder. I turned and looked only to see one of the girls from the night before, she was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap with a smile that just cut right through me. Compared to the “party girl” I had seen hitting the dance floor the night before, I knew I was looking at a very peaceful soul.

This woman and I somehow bonded instantly. For the first time, in a long time, I was with someone that was treating me with respect. She held onto my hand for the next two days as we tried to share as much as we could about ourselves before the cruise ended..
Our ship had to skirt by the western side of Hurricane Isadore to get us back to port, it was a great night and I was living my cyclonic dream. The two of us simply ran around on deck in what I estimate to be 60 knot winds while others stayed inside. At one point as we pushed to open a door to the outer deck, we realized that if the door was that hard to open, we may just want to stay inside. Somewhere in all of this wind and rain, I received the nicest compliment I have ever received from a girl in my entire life. She called me a “Good Egg.”

After the cruise this girl and I emailed each other only a few times, you see she lived out in San Francisco and I lived in Fort Worth. Things developed on the home front and that all ended about as quickly as it started. Time marched on and all contact was lost.

Several years later, in 2007, a work friend of mine lost his son in a tragic accident. The death of this young man brought back together an entire generation of friends that had all but lost contact with one another. As I listened to old war stories, and who is where today, I recognized an old familiar feeling. Out of all the people I felt I owed or connected to in some way from my past, I was now alone, and I was now free. For the first time since the later 1970’s, I was in clear, guilt free air.

It’s what I always do, open last.

Two days after this young man’s service, I was working a flight in my job as an Aircraft Dispatcher. This flight was in a holding pattern, just doing circles over San Francisco. Like a beacon, this flight not only drew my attention to a city I hadn’t dispatched to in years, but also to a girl I had not seen or actually spoken with in almost five years. A girl that had done nothing but treat me graciously.

I recalled she had this really odd email address, one easy to remember. I thought to myself, “There is no way she still uses it”, so I sent her an email. It bounced back immediately, I sighed and thought to myself, “Well, you’ve blown it again young James.” As I was about to delete it, I noticed I had misspelled the name. I retyped the letter and tried again.

She answered about an hour later, and that told me everything I needed to know about the plan, “Remain still.” It’s an old Indian proverb.

We laughed about our cruise and the events on board. Then we talked and wrote of stories that have transpired in the last five years. She is now a breast cancer survivor, while my sister passed of breast cancer a few years back. She has a brother that passed of cancer as well, a brother named Jimmy, which explains why she has a hard time saying my name.

I spoke with her about a motorcycle wreck and other failures in my life as she shared some of her self inflicted hardships as well. We spoke of dating failures, and joked about friends with benefits, as there was absolutely nothing threatening about her demeanor.
For someone I barely knew, it was all so familiar.

It reminds me of a sky dive I made in the mid 1970’s, an 18 person effort at a free fall formation. At 3500 feet the formation broke, and I watched all of the other sky divers deploy their parachutes, all but one. At 1800 feet I looked across the sky at another sky diver, each of us with our hands on our ripcords (Yes, I admit it, I jumped in the “ripcord” days. Parachutes today use a hand held pilot chute to deploy the main chute). Now understand, we are at 1800 feet, falling at a rate of 174 feet per second.

I don’t remember who pulled first, I honestly don’t. What I do remember, is her coming up to me after the jump snickering about the stand off, it was just one of those “understood” things. This other sky diver and I didn’t run in the same circles, but anytime we were on a jump together, we’d look across the plane at each other and know we’d see each other at the bottom after all the other jumpers had opened. It was just a simple understanding of a very basic philosophy, “Remain still.”

What does all of this mean? It means I still have a buddy in free fall with me, so I don’t think I’ll open just yet, I’m going to hang around and see what she does. She seems to be someone who isn’t desperate to control the outcome, and someone who lets nature take its course, someone who thinks an awful lot like me. This could be dangerous!

I do know that this cruise, this girl, and reconnecting after 5 years is a good story, a story with purpose, and that puts a smile in my heart today.

(Above Material registered and copyright protected 2007, James Heffernan)

You know, every now and then, time opens up to an event that represents the tragedy going on around us.  The Monterrey Pop Festival was indicative of this type of event parallelling the Vietnam Conflict. 

I heard a Vietnam Vet once tell a story on how while held prisoner, the Viet Cong played this song, over and over again trying to demoralize the prisoners.  He told how this song made them smile and gave them hope that someday, they would be home again. 

When the POW’s were released and brought home, their first stop in the states was Travis Air force Base, next door to San Francisco. 

Funny how these things work out. 

James Heffernan