Getting High

August 08, 2007


Eating a bite of the most chocolatey of all chocolate cakes, surrounded by family and friends, it occurs to me that I am one lucky broad. It’s my birthday and I’m vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, enjoying a self-indulgent week away from the responsibilities of managing a college bookstore and caring for my mother.

My birthday cake is topped by a single wishing candle because sixty would set the house on fire. Passing smiles and cake around the table, we chat lazily about a number of things, including a brief discussion of “what I’d like to do someday.” Buoyed by the good will and humor surrounding me, I idly mention that I’d like to go parasailing. I neglect to add “. . . maybe . . . someday . . . in fact, I may be talking without really thinking about what I’m saying. “

That was Friday night. By Sunday afternoon, I’m dangling over Maryland’s Currituck Sound at the end of a 1200 foot tether roughly 1/10th the diameter of what I would have used, had I been put in charge of such things. Happily, I’m not dangling alone. My daughter, Alison, who orchestrated this alarming turn of events, is in the harness next to me, laughing and snapping photos and singing a lively rendition of Happy Birthday to youuuuuu.

We are amazed at how quiet it is far above the boat and the water and the general hub-bub of life on the sound. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect the silence. We can talk without raising our voices--we whisper and can still hear one another. As we swoosh through the air, we tip back in our padded harnesses to gaze at the multi-colored panels of nylon rising above and behind us. The effect, if we don’t look down, is of sitting on a canopied porch swing in someone’s backyard, minus the tall glass of iced tea and ground under our feet. I love the sensations—the cool air, the sea scent, the unfamiliar lightness of being. I’m glad the outfitters were set up for double and triple harnessing options. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this alone.

We wave wildly at the passengers on the boat , including my daughter’s boyfriend who is taking photos of us way up here while we take photos of him way down there. “Hey, Benjamin!" we yell into the wind, "You’ve got to try this!”

There are two other groups on board—one couple who has already had their turn and a man and two boys awaiting theirs. We’d watched the couple who went ahead of us as they lifted off the back of the boat and into the sky. We laughed nervously as the boat’s crew of two handled the lines and the boat and maneuvered the parasail to varying heights, ending the ride by dipping the surprised couple into the sound before reeling them in by means of a winch and pulley system to land, standing up, on the same platform from which they’d taken off. Watching the process prior to our own take-off had lessened my anxiety considerably.

Alison helps me get oriented as we hang languidly over the sound. We pick out the area surrounding the beach house and the place where we plan to have a drink when we get back on land. We can see the thin line of a pier in the distance and a number of birds flying below us, swooping in to score a lunch of fresh fish. The shoreline stretches out in wiggly map-like lines on both sides of the Outer Banks. I’m amazed to see the proximity of ocean and sound from this vantage point.

As with any event in which my senses are fully engaged, I have no awareness of time passing. I could happily hang out, literally, a very long time—perhaps a day or two? But we become aware of the slowing of the boat and the tug of the tow-rope as we begin our descent. We laugh and scream as we’re dunked in the water like teabags, gasping at the splash of waves and salt and the craziness of it all. We drift toward the boat, exhilarated. Alison executes a perfect stand-up landing while I do a sort of crazy dance with the harnesses.

Hugging and laughing, we start to make plans for next year, and the next, and the one after that.