Kelsey Sheehy, 26, Iowa City
Student @ University of Iowa

I could feel the color drain from my face as my stomach somersaulted. The light panel glowed red – two minutes to go. As the light switched to green and the door opened I looked over one last time to catch the excitement on my mom’s face. Seconds later we were both falling through the sky at 120 miles per hour.

Wind roaring in my ear with a loud whoosh, I immediately positioned myself in the free-fall position – head back, hips forward, feet tucked toward my butt. Breathe. The thrill of the free fall felt crisp, like I had just splashed my face with ice-cold water – but multiplied – and I tried to catch my breath.

Randy DeShaw, my tandem instructor, stuck his hand into my line of sight giving me a thumps-up and signaling me to wave to the camera. I waved my hands in small, quick bursts, careful not to deviate too far from the proper position, which I was sure would lead to the early death mentioned on several waiver forms earlier that morning.

“You know, my life insurance policy won’t pay out for this,” Mom said as we pulled up to Paradise Skydiving’s jump site at the Vinton Memorial Airport – little more than two hangers and a landing strip. “It’s like they consider it suicide or something, jumping out of a plane.”

In just over a minute I dropped from 14,000 feet to 5,000. Feeling Randy slap me three times on my hip, I grabbed the orange handle and pulled. Relief mixed with the adrenaline of the free fall as the parachute opened, snapping me upright.

It opened! I’m alive! I’m a sky diver!

Taking in the view, I fought off my tendency for motion sickness as Randy pulled down on the right toggle, sending us swooping in that direction. “That might be your mom over there” he said, pointing to a hot pink and neon green parachute.

I bet she is loving this!

I tried to imagine what my mom was thinking as she took in the same sights as I was. She had wanted to sky-dive for her 50th birthday, but the idea didn’t take flight until six years later.

Earlier that morning, waiting for our turn to jump, my mom showed no sign of nerves. She had been waiting for this day.

“That’s my guy!” she laughed, pointing to her tandem instructor Ken Poston as he fitted her harness. “I’m so excited! We’re going to flip!” I thought about how my mother’s exuberance embarrassed me growing up, and how I did not always appreciating having what my friends referred to as a “cool” mom.

But I was far from embarrassed as I watched her jump around, clapping with excitement and entertaining our fellow sky divers. As I silently chewed on my nail – a nervous habit – I thought of all the seemingly irrational things my Mom had prodded me to do – like leaving my full-time job to go back to school. Now I could add jumping out of a plane to the list. And how many people can say they’ve done that with their moms? This was something we would always share, just the two of us.

It took less than five minutes to parachute down from 5,000 feet. As I came in for landing, the distance between myself and the ground quickly disappeared. “Flare! One, two, three four!” Randy shouted in my ear, signaling the landing procedure we had gone over on the way down. My feet touched solid ground and it was over.

My mom landed just before me and, already unhooked from her parachute, was jumping up and down like a high school cheerleader. She wrapped her arms around my waist in a hug and said “Want to do it again?”

Absolutely.

Kelsey Sheehy Skydiving at Paradise Skydiving, Vinton from Carly Bossert Weber on Vimeo.

Kelsey Sheehy is a full-time journalism/spanish student at the University of Iowa, graduating in December, with no idea what she’d like to be when she grows up. She just hopes it involves a bottle of wine, Dove dark chocolate and a little adventure.

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