Falling Into Space
When I was in my third semester of community college, I was assigned to interview someone about their greatest fear. I thought I wanted to be a reporter back then, despite my crippling fear of speaking to people. My solution to this was to talk to my parent’s friend, despite my professor’s instruction to speak to someone I didn’t know well. I set up the interview while my parents were visiting her. I was nervous, but I didn’t think it would be that difficult. After all, all I had to do was ask one question and then let them talk.
“So, what’s your greatest fear?” I asked her, setting my phone on the table in front of us. All I needed was a few good quotes, and then I could write a paper that would be good enough to turn in. She sat there for a while before she answered, “Being alone”—A common enough fear. Even I had it. But she didn’t say anything else, and silence fell as I tried to prod her for more. One sentence wasn’t enough for a paper. To my disappointment, she didn’t feel comfortable speaking at length about the subject. I waited, hoping the silence would draw something out of her. Nothing. I politely thanked her and grabbed my phone to stop recording. The paper wasn’t going to be good, but I had something at least.
Seeing that my questions weren’t getting a response, my father decided to speak up. I had seen him thinking on the other side of the table the entire time. Maybe he just wanted to help spark a discussion. Maybe he just got inspired by the question. He tilted his head to the side, looking up at the ceiling. Then, “I think I’m afraid of falling up.”
My mother nodded, as though she had expected that answer before he said it. I was in the dark, however. I hadn’t seen my father fear many things in my lifetime. He was always joking, never taking anything seriously. But he was serious now.
My father wanted to make perfectly clear that he knew it was ridiculous. He didn’t want to come across as “insane”. But it was a relatively new fear, gained later in life when my family moved to the desert. In 2010, we moved to Gallup, New Mexico. Gallup was a very small town in the middle of New Mexico. Aside from the houses in the residential area that we lived in, there was a lot of open space. Despite my father having lived all around the country in his youth, it was his first time in the high deserts. Here the sky was so expansive that you could look into the distance and see miles away. You could even pick out certain areas where it was raining.
He wanted to experience the night sky in a place that wasn’t surrounded by light pollution—to see the night sky in a way he’d never experienced before. So, he went outside a few hundred feet away from our neighborhood and into a large desert field. As he looked up at the night sky, he felt something familiar bubbling inside of him. He recognized it immediately. “Vertigo,” he said. A panicked breath alerted him to his hyperventilating lungs. He had to look away from the vast skies above.
During the day, the sky didn’t bother him. At night, though, the stars threatened to sweep him off his feet. In the middle of the desert, there’s little shrubbery. No trees for miles and only weak, dry grass tufts around his feet. The grass would rip from the ground without a second thought. No tree branches to help keep him planted. What could keep him on the ground? With the universe spread out against the sky, the thought that gravity itself might fail didn’t seem impossible. In those moments, it felt all too real. He had no way to stop it, should it happen. He would float up: off the earth and into the cold expanse of space.
He laughed, shaking his head from how ridiculous he thought his own fear was. We didn’t live in the desert anymore. Instead, we were in the safe greenery of New York. The conversation eventually drifted to other things, like the dinner that we were making. I turned off my recording, deciding that I’d have to lie about who the true participant was in my interview. My paper had practically been written for me. I privately erased the first clip, knowing that it wouldn’t be used. I joined my parents in the kitchen to help prepare dinner.
The strange thing is that my father still attempts to trigger this fear in himself. There’s something that calls to him. He wants to experience that fear. Or maybe he just wants to try to see the beauty of the sky for a few moments before the fear sets in again. Since then, I look at the sky differently. I’m almost remorseful that I didn’t take a chance to look up into that sky like my father had. Would I have felt it too? The siren song that the galaxy seemed to offer him: something beautiful, but ultimately frightening.
Collin Anderson Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction, Honorable Mention
Kaili Mello is graduating this spring with Bachelors in English with a minor in Professional Writing. She enjoys writing all genres, but has picked up a particular interest in Creative Non-Fiction. She is particularly interested in discussing queer and fat perspectives through her writing.