Skydiving's an extreme sport, right? The sort of thing that would only be tried
by people with dyed dreadlocks and Oakleys who can scream at a camera while it whirls
round them at odd angles. Dude. If this is your image of the sport I hate to destroy it,
but I'm going to have to, because my Mum has skydived. And if my mother can do it,
then anyone can, with or without the designer shades. She'd just celebrated her
50th birthday, and I guess she felt like doing something a little reckless. To be
honest, for someone who's so scared of heights that they can't look over balcony
of an apartment block, it must seem very reckless.
I come from the UK originally, and have spent the last two years living and working in Québec.
Last summer, my Mum and brother came to visit me here, to enjoy a bit of the French
culture and lifestyle in Montréal. This summer I'm travelling back to England with
my girlfriend for a holiday- travelling half-way around the world to play tourist in the area
where you used to live might seem odd, but I miss my family, and I don't want them to feel
like I've deserted them. Having Mum over last summer was a whole new experience for me,
because it allowed me to show her the lifestyle I was leading an ocean away from her.
And it made me realize that it was not a lifestyle of mine, but a life without
my mother.
Mum came to the decision to make a skydive very suddenly.
Originally she had come to visit the Drop Zone with
the promise of a day relaxing in the sun watching people float out of the sky under
colourful parachutes.
Mum must have gotten bored with just watching the others come floating out of the sky to
land softly in the grass, and decided she'd like to try it herself (not
being influenced of course by the cute tandem master).
The jump itself was pretty uneventful, which is to say that they fell nearly 10,000 feet
at about 120 miles per hour (about 200 feet per second), and flew the last few thousand
feet more slowly to land softly and accurately on the lawn in front of the main building.
It was an incredible thrill for her, as it is for anyone the first time they get to fly
without being fixed to any object whatsoever. She surprised herself by not being scared
at all. It seems that the situation is so alien that it's difficult to be scared.
Of course, being mum she had to manage to do something funny. During the freefall, her
breath kept getting taken away. I'm not sure why this doesn't happen to
everybody else, but you can clearly see on the video and in photos that when she tried to take a breath,
she looks very surprised and her eyes pop. She also 'forgot to stand up'
after she and the tandem master had landed, causing them both to crumple up on the ground,
which looked very amusing.
Skydiving's not without it's risks, but it's not exceptionally difficult or dangerous, and
it lets you find out something about yourself, and how you cope with stress and perceived
danger. For people like my Mum it's a once in a lifetime experience, and something that
she can always look back on as an incredible experience. I hope she's as proud of herself
I am of her.
