Out of a Blue Sky

Out of a Blue Sky

It was a beautiful day in the summer of 1994, and Lindsey and I were enjoying the sun and the ocean. We stood at the end of a pathway that extended along the top of the channel breakwater in Marina del Rey, and it was a busy place in the noonday sun with bikers, couples pushing strollers, skaters, walkers, and dogs all competing for space on the narrow paved walkway. To the north stretched the beach and shoreline, up past a dilapidated pier through Venice and Santa Monica, eventually to curve around to the west past Malibu; the Santa Monica Mountains were sharp against the sky.
 
Lindsey and I were at a crossroads in our relationship. She was not sure what she wanted from our romance, or what she wanted from me. My job in Century City was not going well, and I was talking with my previous firm about accepting a position with them in Georgia and relocating to Atlanta. This potential change added a new element of stress to our lives, and a new pressure related to time as well. As it was, I was not sure that I would ever get past the damage inflicted on her by past relationships, but I wanted to try.
 
Then each of us experienced a private moment; mine was first. We were standing at the rail talking when I heard or sensed it; my eyes darted up the coast to the north. “What is it?” she asked quietly, sensing my distraction, a bit of concern in her voice. “Is everything Okay?”
 
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I just…,” my voice trailed off as I stared out into the glare of sun and water. Then I saw it, a small black spec coming down the coast fast and low. The sound was now becoming distinct; I saw that it was a Bell Ranger helicopter flying above the shoreline heading south. Now I could feel the sound in my chest. It was, as Michael Herr once said, the only sound that is sharp and dull at the same time. That sound of a helicopter always got my attention, a relic of Vietnam reaching out of my past and across the years to stab at me here in the Marina today. “That sound distracted me for a bit,“ I finally offered.
 
We continued talking there in the afternoon sun, a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean; then it was her turn. I saw her eyes move to the horizon; I followed her gaze as she looked southwards down the shoreline. In the distance, a few miles beyond the channel and Playa del Rey, I could see and hear the big jets lumbering aloft as they left LAX. Lindsey had been a flight attendant for many years, and had flown all over the globe. The fabric of her life, and many of her friends and past loves, was woven in those years and in that world. She looked wistfully at the big jet as it rose out over the ocean, getting smaller as it gained speed and flew higher and farther away. There was a look of resignation on her face, along with a mixture of sadness and longing.
 
There we were, two people standing together near the ocean in the bright summer sun, holding hands and talking, exploring our most intimate and personal thoughts. Our lives were sliding into divergent paths, and we were struggling to see if that divergence was something that we should attempt to alter. As we stood on the jetty, trying to visualize an uncertain future together, two strange events came to strike at us out of a clear blue sky. Within a span of minutes, we were both assailed by ghosts; ghosts from the past brought to us courtesy of sights and sounds from the sky.