... one of those moments ...
June 22, 1999
5:26 a.m.
Do you want to go tomorrow?" we cried. My dad held five tickets to the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in his hand, good for anytime this year. But this was, of course, Father's Day weekend. Brigid batted doe eyes his way. "Sure," he said, glancing furtively over at my mother. I inherited my love of roller coasters from my dad. "Sounds good," she replied, smiling in that gentle way she has when she knows it won't do much good to refuse.   We split up, of course. Mom and Lisa and Brigid went to the things they like, and Dad and I headed for the tall rides. "Looks like a short line for the Hellevator," Dad said. He was dressed in a gray golf shirt with the emblem from the cruise he and my mom took last year. An LA Dodger's cap sat on his head at an angle. My brother, his other son, lives in LA. I'm pretty sure he got the cap from Jeff. "let's do it," I replied. I had on my "Picasso's Cat's" T-shirt and a Florida Marlins baseball cap. We took off toward the ride. Then we rounded the curve, and found that the "short line" really wasn't that short, but instead snaked around a few hundred times. So we waited. It was a pleasant enough morning, though. Cool, with lots of clouds. We talked about Brigid, and about Lisa's work. They're both busy. We talked about Branson, where Mom and Dad spent their 40th anniversary earlier this month. Pretty soon it was our turn to ride. The Hellevator is a tower, something like 14 floors tall. The concept of the ride is that it raises you up through its entire height, then it drops you in a free fall, catching you only at the very bottom. As we traveled upward, the horizon splayed out in front of us. We got higher. The machine clunked a few times above us. I looked at my dad. "It's all downhill from here," I said. Then everything went silent. The first third of the fall doesn't bother you at all, you know? In fact, it almost doesn't feel like you're falling. Then, a voice starts screaming in your ear. "What if we don't stop?" Wind is rushing past, and you realize you've clenched the side of your cheek between your teeth. The voice begins to sieze up, too. "My God, we aren't stopping!" When we got to the bottom, I looked at my dad. His heart hadn't stopped. Good. Be a shame to waste the price of a ticket with a heart attack on the first ride, you know? "How about the Vampire, next?" Dad said. Lines, it turns out, are the hit of the day. The fact that one big ride is shut down, and that the others appear to be working at half-staffing results in a situation where every line is very long. We stand and talk about Jeff and his girlfriend, Meg. Dad says Meg is thinking about looking for another job. Jeff is working like mad at Mattel, and while he seems to like what he does, that it would be great if his guitar work would take off. See, he went out there quite a few years ago with his band with dreams of making the bigtime. He's still out there. Still playing. You want persistence--the guy's got me beat on all counts. About a half-hour later, the Vampire's cars are sent off without anyone on them. "This is not a really good sign," I said. "Wonder what's up," Dad replies. A man pushes past us from the front of the line, leaving, and grumbling something about the general quality of the park and the nature of the length of the line. Let's just say that he was unhappy, and used a term that rhymed with "trucking." "Gee," Dad says, his eyes lighting up playfully. "I didn't realize it was that kind of line." "What a place, eh?" I replied. Then they shut down the ride, and it was our turn to grumble. Lunch was made at Swampwater Jack's, which, it turns out has no seafood--just chicken and salisbury steak. It was pretty good food, though. And it filled us up just fine. Of course, the cashier had problems with her machine, and the five of us stood in line for several minutes waiting for her to get it worked out. The people in front were the credit card guinea pigs, and had to suffer through enough torment that we realized it would just be easier to pay cash. So we did. Lisa and Brigid and Mom told us about all the rides they had ridden. Somewhere along the line, we talked about Sheena, who is Mom and Dad's cat, and who has had some stomach problems that we won't go into here. Let's leave it at saying that Dad and Sheena are close, and I know he was really worried there for a little while. T2 was next. I think it stands for "Terror Squared." It's a ride where you strap yourself into a seat the size of a postage stamp, attached to a rail above your head. This seems fine when you're in the loading dock and they put the big steel bars over your shoulders. But let me tell you that once you get going, and the winch cranks you up a couple hundred feet into the air, and you start to see a lot of the city around you, it suddenly becomes painfully obvious that there isn't anything between you and the ground. Dad and I are experienced coaster riders, of course. We always wait for the first car. So now we're fifteen feet from the big drop, easing slightly downward, facing directly into the green treetops. Personally, I'm feeling more than a bit naked, and I swear there's a bunch of birds looking up with expressions of pure horror on their beaked faces as they fly below. Both my dad and I are sitting on our hats to keep them from blowing away, and I'm reconsidering how intelligent he is to have actually come to this point. "Is your will set?" I yell over at him. "Yep, he quips. "Sheena gets it all." I never got a chance to respond. Let me stop here to say that I try very had to avoid using a lot of profanity in my journal, figuring if I can't get across my emotions without it, then I'm not much of a writer. What this means is that I just erased a large chunk of what I had written previously, because to be quite honest, I don't think a non-profane word came from my mouth throughout the duration of the flight--and I use the term, flight appropriately, for that's what it surely was. Steel poles whizzed past like black rods of death. I swear to God I thought we were going to crash into the ground at any moment. Afterward, my dad would say that you would never know if anything ever went wrong on the ride, because the whole thing feels like you're completely out of control. It twists and flips you upside down, and turns and generally makes you squeeze every muscle you've got until all the blood in your body has been forcefully expelled through your sweat pores or your eye sockets, whichever is more handy at the time. At one point I curled my legs up, hoping to avoid losing anything more than my ankle and foot. The flight jolted to its end maybe a minute later. "Holy Mother of God," I sighed. "Jesus Christ," my dad said. I couldn't see him very well because of the big restraining system they have, but his voice sounded very far away. They slowly drew us to the place where we unloaded, and both of us checked all our parts, then grinned at each other and tried to walk away as if we weren't shaking. In other words, it was totally awesome, and both of us loved it. We would have gladly done it again if the line wasn't so damned long. We found Lisa and Mom and Brigid, and regaled them with tales of our great daring. We each rode the smaller roller coaster with Brigid, and filled up with lemonade. While we stand in line for the next ride, I get a moment to take a real look at my dad. He's just a little shorter than me. His skin crinkles in a few places, and he has a light age spot beginning to appear high on his cheek. His hair is dark, and barely graying, and his eyes squint against the sun behind glasses that are shaded by his Dodger's cap. It's a good face. Friendly, and open. His smile is a simple pulling back of his upper lip that draws his skin flat against his front teeth and shows his canines as much as anything else. I like it a lot. By about any measure I can come up with, my dad is a fine man. "Better take your hat off," I say. Dad pulls the cap down farther over his head. "Nah, I think it'll stay on for this." We are sitting in one of the Twisted Sisters, an older style, wooden coaster. I shrug and turn my hat around backward. I don't care if it makes me look like a dork, I'm not losing my hat. The ride takes us upward. I look at the rail, remembering that while in the line Dad talked about how the track had been designed, speculating on the configuration of the wheels. He had earlier discussed several little physics problems, how to model escape velocity and orbital mechanics, and a few other things. You get a lot of that when you go to a park with a retired professor of the mechanical engineering discipline. We're in the first car, of course . . . and before you know it, we're plummeting downward. This is a good, old-fashioned roller coaster in that it pummels you sideways and rushes you up and down. fifteen seconds into the experience, I hear my dad's throaty, wind-whipped voice. "Oh no! I lost my hat. Oh, Damnit, I lost my hat!" Out of the corner of my eye, I see his arms fight the motion of the coaster, raising to his head in a movement that reminds me of a beetle waving its legs after its been turned upside down. While it's funny, I hear real pain in his voice. I look over and see the wind is pushing his hair around. "I lost my hat! Damn it!" The coaster throws him against me. "Don't worry," another voice, female, comes from behind us. "I've got it back here." Turns out he is lucky, today, and his hat has fallen into the seat behind him. I reach up and grab my own hat down as we approach a hill, thinking that I ought to sit on it from this point on. We're going up as I try to cram the thing under my seat. I'm pressing against the floorboard, trying to raise my butt in the constrained space of the cart. Just as we crest the zero-g point, a muscle in my thigh cramps up, and pain shoots through my side. "Cramp," I yell. "Cramp! Cramp!! I've got a cramp!!! Aaaahhhh!!!! I've got a cramp!!!!" My dad, I swear, is trying to turn around and reach back to get his hat. I'm moaning about my cramp. The coaster turns us right, and I fall into my dad's shoulder. The next thing I know I'm laughing. Yeah, it still hurts. But I can't help it. I'm laughing and laughing so hard, and the coaster is thundering along, and my dad settles back in his place, having given up his ill-advised attempt at retrieving his hat. The cramp goes away. The ride finally finishes. "Wow," dad says. I think I'm still laughing. "Well, it's a good hat, you know?" my dad says as he puts it back on his head. It sits a little catty-wampus at first until he reaches up and straightens it. It is a good hat. But his voice betrays him. There's a little lilt to it that tells me so much more about that hat. Blue, with a white interlaced LA on it. It came from Jeff, and he wears it a lot. I would too, I realize. It fits him. "Of course it is," I say, grinning. "It's your Dodgers cap, man." So, we do Thunder Run, and finish the sweep of the park's big rides. It's a good one, too--really fast with a couple big drops. Dad sits on his hat. I sit on mine. It's dark enough that we actually notice the flash of the camera that they have set up to take pictures of all the riders. We don't buy one, though. Don't need it. There are moments where your life is crystal clear. When we finally meet Brigid and Lisa and Mom, it's getting late. They've already had dinner. "Can we go ride the Himalayas?" Brigid whines. It's late, and I know both my dad and I are hungry. But I've only ridden one other ride with her all day. I look at dad. "Can three ride that one at once?" I ask the girls in general. "Yep," Lisa says. So we go. The Himalayas, if you don't know, is a ride that goes in a circle. It has wide cars that three or four people can fit into, and it goes up and down. They play loud music, and ask the people riding it to scream as loud as they can. If you do a good job screaming, they let you go faster. It's one of Brigid's favorite rides. We get in car #13, which is both mine and my dad's favorite number. Dad gets the seat that will get all the pressure. I'm in the middle. The ride starts. Brigid raises her hands and starts to scream. Inertia throws me against my dad, Brigid against me. The sun is now down, and the park lights are blazing red and yellow and blue. The music is loud hip hop, and people are yelling at the top of their lungs. Dad complains about a pair of bolts that are digging into his side and his hip, so I do my best to keep from squishing him. Maybe halfway through the ride, I look at Brigid. Her skin is perfectly smooth, and her hair is flowing away from her face. Her earring is a gold cup with a small pink amethyst in its center that reflects the ride's light. Her eyes glitter just like her mother's. She's been riding rides all day, and would probably gleefully ride them all night. Her scream is a reedy, high pitch that only ten-year-olds can accurately make. Behind her, the background whirls and blurs, twisting like time. Suddenly I get a glimpse of a moment when I am in the seat against the rail, and Brigid is in the middle. I would like to say that I wondered about who was in the far seat, that I peered through time to look at my grandchild. But only now, in the quiet recess of my basement does it even occur to me that I should have. She looks over at me, and notices that I'm holding onto the rail but doesn't grasp that I'm trying to keep from turning her grandfather into a pancake. "Let go!" she yells. "You've got to let go." And I look at her, feeling the tug of inertia swinging me around, wondering how to tell her what I'm thinking right then--knowing that there is no way to really do it. This is that moment. I've got my dad sitting on one side of me, and my daughter sitting on the other side of me. Lisa and Mom are watching us go around. Why would I ever want to let go?  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming." William James |
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