Dean Poling
Eight of them piled onto the boat parked in the St. Augustine marina. Three groups of strangers. A married couple. A family of four: Grandmother, mother, two boys. The two-man crew of the parasailing vessel.
The married couple had made their parasailing reservations earlier that morning. A phone call made from their traveling vehicle. They had arrived in St. Augustine less than an hour earlier. They changed in the restrooms of the hotel lobby. Their room not yet ready. A wedding anniversary marked with a getaway and a parasailing flyaway.
They do not know the others on the boat. The married couple soon learned a few things of them. The mother and her sons had moved to Florida several months earlier. Grandma visited from Kentucky. Mom was along for the boat ride. Grandma and the two boys would parasail. This family had attempted parasailing a couple times earlier. Weather postponed those excursions.
Storm clouds horseshoed the city, darkening the western horizon. Overhead, blue skies stretched out to the Atlantic. The boat backed away from the pier. The captain soon had the boat speeding to open waters.
The boat passed parked boats and ships ranging from motors to masts, under the skeletal renovations of the Bridge of Lions, into the afternoon shadow of the replacement draw bridge. It sliced through blue waters away from the bruised skies, into the blue, the deep, deep blue. Small islands and tall grasses surprised the passengers.
Choppy waters tightened their grips on the boat railings. The boat rose with an airless, stomach-rising weightlessness. It slammed down, a crashing of ocean, making waves upon the waves. The passengers whooped excitement. Knuckles whitened on the rail. Water sprayed the passengers. Water doused the first mate. He dripped beside the laughing captain.
The married couple’s husband thrilled at this unexpected adventure. The boat rocked up and down. Uppity-up. Down. Over and over. Thrilled but quiet, concerned his stomach may betray him.
Grandma talked non-stop. She chattered above the crash of waves. She talked as the first mate strapped her and the two grandsons into their harnesses. She talked as she was connected to the bright yellow parachute between her two grandsons. She out-talked the wind. Her voice still audible as the smiley-faced parachute boomed with wind and her dangling legs swinging back and forth with those of her grandsons. They rose into the air until her voice faded to nothing.
Rope uncoiled. The parachute with grandma and grandsons decreased to a yellow dot on a blue field, tied to a rope, a big kite on a string. Watching those six miniature legs twitter in space so far above, the wife said to her husband, “Oh my, I don’t think I can do that.”
“Are you serious?” the husband said, thinking of the money wasted if she chickened out. Thinking she better not expect him to stay on board if she didn’t go. “Seriously?” he said again.
“No,” she laughed. “Of course, I’m going up.”
The first mate reeled in the rope. Grandma and the boys descended with the parachute. The boys still quiet. Grandma quiet, too. They landed on the back of the boat. They never touched water. They stood. The parachute billowed. The first mate released them from the harness. The boys said nothing. They didn’t smile. They were blanks. Grandma walked away from the chute on shaky legs. Quiet save for the occasional moan.
The first mate helped the married couple into the harnesses. He told them to sit on the launching area at the back of the boat. He attached the chute.
“If we hit a wave, the harness may become real uncomfortable,” the captain said to the husband, looking to the wife. “She should be fine. But the harness can get uncomfortable for men. You know what I mean? If that happens, believe me, you’ll find a way to adjust the harness without falling out.”
The husband nodded.
The first mate explained where to hold the harness straps, adding they did not need to hold it once they were aloft. “Do you want us to dip you?” the mate asked. Yes, they nodded. The husband added, not wanting to lose the glasses on his face, “Not too deep. ... I would take them off, but I want to see the sights up there.”
The boat roared. The rope uncoiled. The couple lifted from the boat in a sitting position. Weightless again, without the wavy crash back into water. They were weightless and rising. Legs dangled. Breezes tickled toes. They rose 500 feet. 1,000 feet. They topped 1,400 feet. The boat buzzed in the never-ending ocean, a toy far below them. Over their shoulders, the buildings and structures of St. Augustine dotted and lined the shore. A city braced for storm clouds, but blue skies still over the sea, a clear day under the yellow-silk smiley face of parachute.
The couple held hands. They talked. They laughed. They swung their feet. They witnessed a school of stingrays swimming, flapping as if in flight below the waters as the couple floated a thousand feet or more above the ocean’s surface.
The boat motor stopped. The couple floated down. Easy as the breeze, they dropped. The motor started. The first mate reeled them in. Spirits heightened, their bodies drooped under the chute. Down, down, down. The boat slowed. Ocean water splashed the couple’s feet, up to their ankles. The boat revved. The chute boomed. The couple lifted. The first mate brought them into a landing on the boat.
The first mate released the elated couple from their harnesses. He and the captain enjoyed the couple’s thrill, asking if they had seen anything below the waters. The husband asked the Kentucky grandma if she had seen anything. She said she did not feel well. “I was fine up there, but not on the boat,” grandma croaked. A grandson said they had seen nothing. They had to deal with grandma saying she felt sick the entire parasailing ride.
On cue, grandma became sick aboard the boat. She held her head over the side, getting sick on the choppy waters.
The married couple felt sympathy for this stranger. She had guts to parasail at 74 years old. Unfortunately, the contents of said guts had spilled into the ocean and partially onto the boat. Yet, the couple, the husband especially, could not contain the enthusiasm of the adventure.
He and the captain talked about the ride. The couple held hands. They beamed on the boat, on the open water. The storm clouds a million miles away, though rushing above them as they raced to shore.
Grandma said her husband ashore would never let her live the illness down. He would emphasize a point he had made earlier: She was too old for this foolishness.
The married-couple husband said to the Kentucky grandma: “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You had the spirit and courage to do something different. Your body betrayed you, but your spirit did not.”
The wife squeezed her husband’s hand for offering kind words to an ill stranger on a boat. The captain and the first mate nodded their heads with admiration for the husband’s words. “Well said,” the captain added.
Grandma considered the man’s words as potential chum for ravenous sharks. She looked at the man as if sighting a flint-lock in a Kentucky mountain feud.
The husband didn’t realize this. He was too full of the sea air, the experience of the parasail and the boat ride, too busy accepting the praise of a captain at sea, the feel of his wife’s hand in his on their anniversary, away from the world in St. Augustine. He did not catch grandma’s look.
He wouldn’t learn of it until his wife told him later in the evening.
She laughed, “Who wants to hear philosophy when you’ve just spent a couple hundred dollars to upchuck at sea?”
“Yeah, if I was sick I wouldn’t want anyone saying that stuff to me either,” he said, adding, “but how can one not be philosophical when you’ve only spent a couple hundred bucks to have a grand adventure at sea?”
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor.
