I'm not a woo-woo type of a person. But sometimes, things that defy explanation cause me to acknowledge a realm beyond our physical reality. The veil between our world and the supernatural lifts briefly, though enough, to make me wonder.
Then in the summer between my junior and senior years, I was strolling along Alameda Boulevard when I spotted someone in the distance walking toward me. The person was so far away I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, much less discern their identity. But for some reason, I had this thought: "That's Kathy Krouse." Sure enough, it was. When she got close, she said, "You won't believe this, Mario, but when I first saw you from way back there, I knew it was you." We were both astonished. Was this an instance of clairvoyance, of a telepathic connection? Who knows? Then we continued on our separate ways and never saw each other again.
The second example is less cheery. In March, 1973, l visited Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo to see the USAF aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds, who at the time, flew F4 Phantoms. The airshow included an open house of the airfield facilities. Inside one of the hangars, sat an F4 belonging to the base tactical wing. The strange part was that every time I approached this aircraft, I felt how the air was ice cold. When the electronics of these jets are powered up, they build a lot of heat and so an external air conditioner is frequently attached to keep things cool. But there was no such unit. I waited nearby to see how other people reacted and noticed I was the only person who seemed to notice this bubble of freezing air around this particular aircraft, the only F4 on static display. What was going on?
Later, when the show started, disaster. On take-off, when the Thunderbirds closed tight into formation, two of their F4s collided. One continued upward, while the other fell to earth and exploded. Its pilot ejected safely. As I reflected on what I'd witnessed, I decided that the cold air around the F4 in the hangar, of a similar type to the doomed jet, was a premonition of misfortune. What else could explain this bizarre and grim incident? From this I concluded that the cosmos would warn me of big trouble. Which turned out not to be true.
Years later, something horrific occurred in my family. I'm reluctant to talk about it for several reasons. It was something so shocking and shameful that my siblings and others in my immediate family kept it to ourselves. I don't share what happened since to talk about it seems to either trivialize or exploit the tragedy. Then there's the fact that we all have had to confront great trauma and heartbreak, and I don't want to give the impression that what I suffered is worse or more damaging than anyone else's pain.
Which leads me to my sister Sylvia's new book, The Trailblazer's Handbook: Practical Tactics to Rise Against the Odds and Achieve Excellence, chronicling her journey from the dirt streets of New Mexico to the C-suites of Silicon Valley: as a rocket scientist; one of the first Hispanics to earn a master's in engineering from Stanford; appointed as White House Commissioner; CEO of the Girl Scouts of America; on the Qualcomm Executive Board of Directors. In the book, she reveals the tragedy, becoming the first of us to go public with what happened. Sylvia did so to explain her journey of growth and self-actualization and that coping with the tragedy was but one obstacle--albeit a significant one--that she had to learn how to navigate.
So what is the supernatural angle? It's this. The book's release date of September 3, is exactly forty years to the day from the tragedy, a time that has loomed over us since 1985. Given all the variables, this has to be more than coincidence. So what is this message from the cosmos? I don't know.
My sister, smiling as she unboxes her books, showing that while we never move past tragedy, we cannot let it define us or rob us of the joys life can still bring.
