All The Launches Big And Small--Rockets, Kids, Life

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My son and I have a Space partnership. It’s subtle. It involves meteors and the International Space Station. I ask, “You want to run across the street to see the ISS? It’s here in exactly seven minutes.” He jumps up without saying a word and throws on shoes. We sprint to a short stretch of road without high trees, face NNW, and wait. The ISS appears in mid-sky. I say, “There it is! So cool!” He says, “Mmhmm.” Then we dawdle home. He goes back to his work. I nearly die of happiness.

I hope he holds our Space moments in his memory long into the future, though I’ll never know. I want to make peace with not knowing, and that’s not such an astronomical ask.

I don’t know if our Space partnership will dwindle someday, or worse, get abruptly scrubbed like a rocket launch but without any of the reasoning you’d get from a slew of Cape Canaveral engineers. I know one day I’ll get scrubbed from my kids’ everyday lives as adulthood asks increasingly more of them. This is my definition of a black hole, but I don’t argue with Life. I scrunch up my nose at it sometimes though.

Last week NASA launched its Antares rocket off the coast of Virginia. I live 120 miles inland. It was bound for the ISS with supplies and science experiments and could be seen from the eastern US if you were lucky, meaning if the clouds cooperated.

“You want to go to the top of the parking garage of the movie theater and see if we can see the rocket? We have an hour ’til launch,” I asked my son.

“Sure, but I need food.”

Deal. He jumped in the shower. I downloaded the NASA app on my phone so we could hear the launch countdown. Then we scrammed. While he grabbed a burrito at a grub vendor near the parking garage, I got antsy watching the minutes tick down. Twenty-five, twenty, fifteen. Burrito in hand, we hightailed it to the top floor of the garage, open to the sky, where we hoped to catch a glimpse of a rocket for mere seconds on its ascent into low Earth orbit.

Yes. We were doing all of this for an experience lasting less than a minute.

We’ve become such a Space-watching team, that we’re used to frequent letdowns — mostly due to clouds, those airborne moisture scoundrels. That night, the clouds were a disobedient 35% sky cover with a bit of smokey haze. A Space partnership yearns for well-behaved clouds — 0% sky cover, no haze.

We listened to the NASA launch protocol on my phone. This an imperative run-through where everything is “check” this and “check” that — or you hope so. If not, the launch is scrubbed.

With five minutes to go, a shiny convertible appeared behind us, so my son and I stepped out of the way to let them through. But the couple was there to see the launch, too. Then a younger fellow sprinted up the far steps lugging a camera on a tripod and joined the party.

There was lots of excitement. We swapped anything aerospace-related, certifying our affiliation with the geekhood.

We’re space geeks.

Us, too.

Certified geek.

This kind of geekhood is where your heart goes ballistic over the smallest aspect of the hobby, and where the camaraderie with others brings the collective love into a feel-good gravitational pull.

That night our mission was not successful — no rocket sighting — but the parking lot party was fun. On the way home, my son observed how happy I was. “That kind of stuff is not fun for me,” he said. Meaning, socializing with strangers.

“I’m an introvert with strangers too,” I said, “but when we have a common love for something, then I get excited to share it with them. It seems like you do that with your video game tribe, no?”

He thought for a second.

“You’re right. That’s true.”

A moment like that with my son is equivalent to a mere thirty-second viewing of an upward-moving dot in the sky. Both are spectacular. Both mean immense things under their smallness.

We all hope for commonality with others, even in the tiniest ways possible — sharing one laugh, enjoying one song, being co-introverts. I hope for commonality with my sons for as long as I can have it. Maybe I can stop worrying about this.

My sons and I have always been close. Why would that mission be scrubbed? Maybe I don’t want this worry as my hobby anymore. Their launch into the world coincides with my own launch into acceptance of the continuity of time. Babies are born. We raise them with all our hearts and more. Then they move on — as they should. Life is one big constant launch. Or maybe we’d long for that if we often declined to launch the weightless, nameless wonder of our lives.

The other evening, I went for a walk and the wind picked up. The towering tops of the trees swayed in a ruckus. Were they dancing or flailing? They soared at an altitude I couldn’t imagine. It was formidable until it wasn’t. I realized every day I fly that high. After all, what does the fox or the chipmunk think of me?

I’m in a countdown then, along with my kids, along with you. Tomorrow is another day and another set of possibilities.

All systems go?

Check.

Three. Two. One.

Lift off.