Good Night Sweetheart — Chapter One

He gave me a goddess for our last Vernal Equinox. She calls down the moon with her arms lifted in a half circle to the night. She stands four inches tall with a batik sarong twisted around her hips, a perfect color of clay, the same I imagined when I discovered her on the page. She was born into a poem I wrote—and long ago on the banks of the Nile. I believe she was the first: Eve of the Nile, who gave the world children, taught them to love, and prepared them for loss.

My statue looks as though someone spent time with her. The card wrapped around her tawny wrist said she was made from Nile mud and sculpted by hand. She holds a thankful gaze to the stars, featureless, yet familiar to those who watch the heavens. Fingerprint lines trace the curve of her arms where the sculptor left a slight pause, perhaps pondering the next curve of her back—the smooth grace of a perfect arch women know for birthing.

Brent believed women hold the power of all generations and are able to control the forces of the universe. He believed I was a goddess, and so I was.

One hour into our first date we knew we would marry. We sat nervously at Crompton’s, a roadside café in a charming canyon just a few miles from town, trying to make meaningful conversation over a partially eaten meal. The next spring we sat at the same table much more comfortable, but no less intrigued with each other. Crompton’s was near the auditorium where we would listen to John Gorka, the folk singer for the first time.

“Yes!” I said. If I were sixteen or even twenty-nine, I would have acted a little hesitant when he asked me to the concert. I was thrilled and surprised to get the invitation and it didn’t occur to me when I blurted out the YES! that I didn’t have the slightest clue who John Gorka was.

“Oh! Do you know John Gorka?”

No. But that didn’t matter.

Crompton was also his last name. It was just coincidence we both thought of the café when he asked if I was interested in dinner. It was there I felt for the first time the hair on my arm capture his electricity when I touched his back. He was paying for the quarter-eaten deli sandwiches and a pitcher of beer when I rested my hand on him in a silent thank-you-for-dinner gesture. It felt like an electrical fire and gave me a jolt as I pulled away from the shock. That jolt started a love affair that set our hearts and bodies on fire from the very start; it flamed up fast and every phase of it was a bright glass-blown heat that was indistinguishable.

We married the next December during a wet snow storm. I asked him. The wedding was just as I had dreamt it a few years earlier, long before I met Brent, while walking from a literature class at Westminster College. I watched the sidewalk turn from white to wet concrete as my feet plodded though the gathering snow. I bowed my head to the falling flakes, thinking the footbridge would be slick with the late night storm when a thought came that I would marry in the small campus chapel. The night was insulated with white, sounds from the nearby street muffled, but with a clarity so piercing I heard the future speak to me. I could smell the silence fall about me as a tickle of snow brushed my face.

I wouldn’t know until the precise moment we walked into the chapel years later that I would live my footbridge dream. It was the type of dream that becomes a wish when childhood yearns for magic and you believe in every thing. The type of dream that stays with you forever, hidden so deeply that it becomes part of you without ever knowing it’s there. Then life sneaks up on you and the magic sparks and every thing changes. That December night in 1993 when we vowed to love each other, without reservation I knew—just so doubtless—that beginning this moment we would share one heart. Reality and déjà vu blended so precisely that again I smelled the moisture as it fell into asphalt blackness. Twice, the parking lot lights made dozens of miniature moon dogs, and twice I felt filled with unforgettable calmness. When something so certain as this happens to you, you never forget the searing details or the effect it has on your soul.

I wore silk with pearls sewn into the neckline and around the cuffs. They followed the detailed lines of my dress along the edges of carefully sewn seams; fitted exactly for me and made by me. I wanted it special and for every pearl I prayed a year of happiness. I’ve been robbed of six hundred and twenty years. I figure I’m owed at least twelve more lifetimes with him—long lifetimes, with no losses, no going-aways, no quick exits. Six more chances to live the parts we missed, twelve more times to share the places we loved, twelve more times to start over, to make the right choices, to say the right things, to listen to the right warnings. Twelve more Chicos. Differently. Better. 
We met one rainy day at the Ogden airport while a group of us sat around waiting for the clouds to lift and the air to dry out. In passing, we shook hands and I welcomed him to Skydive Ogden. He had completed the skydiving course at the Cedar Valley Drop Zone, south of Salt Lake. It was the largest skydiving operation in Utah and was where my husband and I had learned to jump.


Jim and I took our first skydiving lesson together. We had dated a couple of months and I thought I was in love. I was twenty-six, divorced, with a four-year-old daughter named Kristin. I used money from my utilities budget for the $85 instruction fee to do a once-in-a-lifetime skydive. He was twenty-two, working, attending the University of Utah sporadically and majoring in Fun. He lived with his mother and could spend whatever it took to make his first jump.



“I can’t see you next Saturday. I have something to do,” is what he said to me the week before.

“What’s up?”

“It’s nothing. It’s a thing a couple guys at work and I am doing.” He hung the word, “thing” out in the air taunting me to ask further. And to play his game I did.

"What? What thing?”

“It’s no big deal. We’re going skydiving,” brushing it off like it really was no big deal, but I’m sure he was dying to tell everyone—that he had the guts to do it.

“Not without me you’re not!” I probably stole his air as I told him I was joining him. It never occurred to me that it took guts to jump. It just sounded damn fun.

We jumped the next Saturday. His buddies didn’t show up, which is typical that people back out, so it was Jim and I and another guy in the class. We spent 30 minutes learning to jump out of the airplane and four hours learning how to save our life when something went wrong. It was well worth the four hours and the $85 instruction fee and I can still remember nearly every movement we learned in class. The instructor told us that we WOULD get hurt if we didn’t follow instructions. I took it seriously that day and on every subsequent skydive.

We learned about parachutes; the names of each element and how they worked. We hung in harnesses secured to the ceiling and practiced the steps to deploy our parachute. Look, reach, pull. Over and over and over until we mimicked it in our heads.

We practiced moving around in the tiny cramped airplane and how to crawl out onto the strut of the wing. We jumped off a platform into a pea gravel pit to practice tuck-and-roll landings, keeping our ankles tightly pressed together and pretending like we squeezed a quarter between our butt cheeks.

“Keep everything tight and rigid and you won’t break your ankle.” We watched every movement Shawna demonstrated and spewed back answers to her save-your-life questions. There was a lot of information to learn and a lot of movements that we practiced over and over until it was all we thought about and it would become second nature when we finally jumped.

As we suited up, my butterflies started—a little bit scared, a lot excited. The night before, I scrawled out a one paragraph Last Will and Testament telling the world that if anything ever happened to me, Kristin was to live with her dad, who was a great guy but not compatible with me. I intended on living, but I acknowledged that what I was doing was not just fun, it was risky. Jim was calm, but quiet, which was uncharacteristic. He was, “being in the moment.” After the jump, he admitted that he was nearly paralyzed with fear. Jack would be our jumpmaster and he walked us through a dirt dive prior to getting into the plane for our jump. A dirt dive is a rehearsal on the ground of the things you’ll do in the air. We each practiced getting up onto our knees in the airplane and performed each maneuver flawlessly. We were ready.

I ran back to the jump house to give Kristin a hug and said, “I love you. Will you be ok sitting right here on the lawn until I get down?” She was four but with the maturity of twenty, she said yes and gave me a dour face. She had been sulking the last couple months and I was trying to ignore her moods. I gave her a hug and headed back to the airplane with forty pounds of gear clunking as I ran.

At 4,000 feet above the ground, Jack grabbed the door handle, looked around at his three students, and yelled, “DOOR!” as he threw it open. The rush of air sucked at my throat. I took long deep breaths of the cool air and was overcome with the need to yell. “Yeeeee Haaa!” was what came out. It was a fine day indeed!

When we were directly over the airport, Jack pointed to Jim and yelled, “Get out!” Jim sat behind the pilot’s seat and was flushed with the color green. He looked at Jack and heard again, “Get Out!” Then Jack put his hand out to help Jim crawl across to the door. Jim did exactly what he was told, hand over hand, foot over foot and perched himself on the small step that was welded to the top of the wheel housing. He inched his hands along the strut and when Jack pointed at him and yelled, “GO!” He executed a perfect arch, threw back his head and let go of the strut.

Then he was gone.

Jack pulled the door closed and the pilot made a sharp turn and headed back to do a second jump run over the airport. I could hardly breath I was so excited. Jack repeated his sequence of commands and I crawled out of the airplane holding onto the strut of the wing with my feet dangling below me. I looked at Jack kneeling in the airplane and everything went silent.

“GO!”

I looked at Jack’s eyes as he said it again. “GO!”

I shook my head at him and all I could think about was getting my skinny spineless body back in that airplane. I clung on and clung on as Jack yelled, GO! and we flew farther and farther away from the airport.

Then I let go. Into silence. Into calm. My parachute opened, I hung in the harness looking around at the mountains in the distance and I was mesmerized with the warm, calm feeling. It was like being… Jonathan Livingston Seagull—thrilled to be airborne.

“Kelly.” I looked around. And again, “Kelly.” Jack had followed me out of the airplane and was yelling at me. “Steer it! Pull down on your brakes. Find the airport.”

I had frozen. The excitement had changed into fear as I was hanging on to the strut for dear life and I just didn’t do anything but hang there. And there I was again, just hanging there, not steering myself toward the airport like I was taught. But oh-my-hell! It was incredible. Flight, it was absolutely amazing.

I eventually remembered all I was taught, popped the steering lines out of the stowage sleeves and made a couple practice turns. I had a near perfect tuck-and-roll landing and Jack asked for a “first-time” kiss, which I quickly learned was a tradition for everything with skydivers.

I giggled all the way back as we walked the half-mile back to the airport. When Jack critiqued my dive, he politely told me that I hadn’t let go, the pilot had to actually shake me off the wing so we didn’t fly into the next county with me hanging there shaking my head, No.

Every movement in the sport was methodical and calculated. And as the summer wore on, Jim rode the wave of stardom being a model student. The instructors loved having him around because he loved jumping and jumping brought them money. He had unlimited cash to make several skydives a day. I sat ground-bound with Kristin watching him excel in Fun. I loved it too, but couldn’t afford the habit. So Jim continued to jump without regard to my need to join him.

I eventually saved up enough money to do a second jump, then a third and by the time he had 100 jumps, I was barely doing my tenth. And as he immersed himself in the lifestyle, he took on the characteristics of the sport: methodical and calculating. He planned his life even though we shared a house and a bed. He spent thousands of dollars on Fun, while I was responsible for rent, utilities, food, tuition at Westminster College and my child. I spiraled into non-existence in his mind and mine, but I told myself it would get better some day.

We married after several years of me hounding him to commit but it was never a good relationship and after finding out about his habit of chasing his young skydiving students, I finally divorced him and he became nothing to me except a mistake.