Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [83]
We sat for a while and just listened to the waves and watched pelicans kamikazeing after their meals. Donna broke the silence. “It’s been a lot of water under the bridge to get here.”
“Yes, it has.”
“I can see you right now as a teenager launching your rockets from the desert. It’s amazing where it led.”
“I’ve got a rocket right here you can launch.” There it was again, my shield of crude humor.
“Mike, can’t you be serious?”
I forced myself to be the man she wanted at this moment. “Okay. I’m sorry. I will be serious. Whatever happens tomorrow,” I felt her tense at the implication of the wordwhatever, “I’ll be living a dream. It wouldn’t have happened without you.” It sounded corny but it was the truth.
We embraced and kissed. It wasn’tFrom Here to Eternity passion but it was sufficient for the moment. It was easier for me to convey my feelings in this physical contact than it was through words. I could taste the salt on her cheeks…tears, not ocean.
I thought of how many random, seemingly inconsequential events steered me through life. If my mom and dad hadn’t ignored those “Danger, Unimproved Road” signs, where would life have taken me? If they hadn’t settled in Albuquerque, where the sky had captured me, what path would I have journeyed? If I had married a different woman seventeen years before, would I now be sitting on this beach?
In a remarkable coincidence, Donna was born on the identical day and year of my own birth, September 10, 1945, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was just a few hours older than me. (In her childhood, my youngest daughter was convinced that men and women had to marry someone who shared their birth date.) Donna’s mom and dad, Amy Franchini and Joseph Sei, were first-generation Americans, born of Italian immigrants. Both spoke fluent Italian, argued incessantly, and smoked like forest fires. When Donna was born, the couple already had one child, a boy, ten years old. They had been trying to have a second child for nearly a decade, praying to a pantheon of saints for a daughter. Amy Sei was thirty-five years old when she finally conceived. In their minds Donna was a miracle and she quickly became the center of the couple’s existence.
Donna’s life was the polar opposite of mine, root-bound. She never moved. Throughout her youth she lived in the same home, only a few blocks from one of the major pathways of adventure for the Mullane clan, fabled Route 66. As a little boy, I had passed within a few hundred yards of the little girl I would one day marry.
We were high school students when we first met. She attended the downtown Catholic high school, St. Mary’s, while I was a student at the uptown school, St. Pius X. Her cousin was my classmate, and through this family connection, Donna and I were introduced in 1961 in our sophomore year. This was a horribly insecure time in my life. My blemished face would have repulsed the Elephant Man. It looked as if I had lost a paint ball game in which the other side had been using Clearasil bullets. And, of course, there were my radar-dish ears to horrify the ladies. I could not imagine any girl finding anything attractive about me. When Donna was introduced I said “hi” and ran to hang with the guys. Destiny would have to wait for another four years.
I continued my tortured journey through high school, occasionally running into Donna at various teen functions, but never talking to her, much less asking her on a date. She wasn’t beautiful. Attractive, with a bubbly personality, would be an honest description.
In May 1963, I graduated from St. Pius and several weeks later departed for the