PonderousMan

berzerker_prime posted a very nice message about this week being the anniversary of all three major disasters in the US spaceflight program - Apollo One, Challenger, and Columbia.

She included this very powerful YouTube video:

This video brought back some rather strong memories, which I wrote about in a comment to her post, but then decided I would share them here as well.... (I should also acknowledge that I got to hear Wil Wheaton reading from his works for the first time earlier tonight, so if there is a certain stylistic tone here, it is meant as the sincerest form of flattery...) It turns out I went rather beyond my original comments, but in a good way, albeit via a much longer and harder path....

I was a senior in high school when the Challenger blew up, dashing between classes when several kids came up to me and said "Did you hear the shuttle blew up?" "Oh, right, sure!" I said...

I assumed they were jerking my chain, because I was one of the leading science students in the school, a known space nut, and also was participating in a NASA contest to fly science experiments on the shuttle. Heck, I was a shoe in - my experiment, "Quantitative Analysis of Iron in Iron Ore in Microgravity", was hand-picked by my chemistry teacher, who already had two national winners in the contest (both of which eventually had their experiments fly on the shuttle). In fact, at that point he was on the teacher advisory board for the contest, so my actual "advisor" was another chemistry teacher, who was basically just along for the ride. I had spent weeks the year before writing up the proposal and drawing up ideas for ways to handle liquids for wet chemistry - basically a classic reduction titration process - on a (then-)newfangled Macintosh Plus. (ah, the joys of learning MacPaint and MacDraw...!) Thanks to that work, I had already been a Regional finalist the year before, but we knew that was just the dry run, and this year we should come out on top.

And so I was pretty skeptical... but after several rounds of "sure, right, uh huh" countered with "no, really, we saw it on TV", I realized maybe they really weren't kidding, and dashed off to the media center, where I saw it on the TV screens right away.

With that explosion, my hopes of winning the NASA contest were blown apart too... Even though I had lots in my favor, my experiment involved using concentrated sulfuric and phosphoric acids to test the iron content in iron ore. As the NASA staffer on the review team at that year's Regionals told me, "it's going to be a while before we let anything stronger than tap water on the Shuttle." So much for my promising career as a space scientist...

But what really blew up that day was my optimism - or perhaps, a certain naivete' - about how glamorous and cool space flight really is. I had wanted to be an astronaut since I could remember, probably starting when my parents got me up at 4 in the morning to watch the Apollo-Soyuz docking live. Though I already had the glasses and extra weight, so I was probably not a good candidate already, I still had hopes of getting my act together and ending up as a Mission Specialist. I was certainly rather familiar with the general and specific criteria for becoming an astronaut, even for someone of that age. But while I knew about Apollo One intellectually, I never really thought about what a major systems failure meant on a rocket... until I saw that image. It was four days before my eighteenth birthday, and looking back I think that day was a major turning point in my life.

I don't know for sure, but I think that may have put a serious dent in some of my motivation to pursue science... at least, events after that seem to fit that pattern. Of course, certain slackerish patterns were already well established, but then before Challenger, being a slacker didn't seem to be a lifestyle, more of just sort of goofing off.

It was affer Challenger that things seemed to fall apart, rather dramatically. I got into Cal Tech just a few months later (even with my 680 Math score, which I thought at the time wasn't nearly good enough). However, a week before my campus visit, my father had a heart attack and nearly died. Though that was the longest night of my life (so far), the following couple of weeks did their best to rival it... in addition to flying to California to visit Cal Tech, I had to go to Washington, where the National meeting of the Shuttle contest was held that year, and I also had to somehow figure out what college to go to. I ended up spending at least two days skipping school, or rather class, since I was in the back rooms of the chemistry department, making sure I had the procedures down for the experiment... and then dashing off to Washington, where I got the bad news that I was almost certainly screwed, and then off to California for 12 hours of sheer climatic and culture shock (having never been in California, seen mountains looming on the horizon, palm trees in the freeway medians, and getting to spend a night in the same dorm that Real Genius was filmed in), and then on arrival back at O-Hare, tromped down to the University of Chicago, where my recovering father had managed to get me an interview with the head of the department of Astrophyics, shepherded by his friend from grad school, who happened to be Provost at the time.

All of which was about to break me, I think... or lead me into very strange and unknown lands. In my heart I know I wanted to go to Cal Tech, but was terrified I couldn't cut it... and then my mother settled it for me, when she said there was no way in hell I could go to school in California with my dad the way he was. I know now what she was really saying was there was no way in hell I could leave her alone to deal with what had happened,,, but one way or another, that was that.

And just as it had when I saw that screen, and in the hospital waiting room, I think something in me died that day... and I never realized how those things were related until now....

That's a really scary and powerful thing to have hidden for so long, and I am crying right now thinking about it.

Today, 22 years later - god in heaven, how can it have been that long? - I'm not really sure if I've dealt with that original blow, much less the many that came after it - both self-inflicted, and from the rest of the world going on around me.

Astonishingly, I just realized that my mother died on January 24th, nearly 11 years to the day after the Challenger. Which means it was just a few days later - quite possibly the 27th - that Jen came back (she was out of the country - on vacation in the Caribbean - when my Mom died), and we were able to be reunited during a very hard time.

Just a few weeks before, at Christmas dinner with my family, Jen and I had been talking about maybe moving to Berkeley or San Francisco... and my mother had said (and this is a quote) "you'll move to Berkeley over my dead body!" After a short stunned silence, I think we all moved on from that awkward moment, and Jen and I had continued discussing the idea of going to Cali. I was not as enthusiastic, but at the same time I was not bound by the quite the same ties, as my father had passed on nearly 7 years earlier, and even though I took care of Mom for a while after that, I had already left home to go to school... the fact we were in the Fox Valley at that point was because of Jen's work, not because of Mom needing help.

And so it was in that same time frame, late January, of 1997 that Jen was with me as I tried to grieve the loss of my mother, and cope with the idea of being an orphan - even if I was nearly 30, it was a hard thing to have lost both parents. But what I realized was that I had someone who loved and cared for me... and so it was in that same time that I realized that I wanted to be with Jen, to have her love and support, and love and support her in turn. In other words, that was when I realized I was ready to get married.

And now tonight, another 11 years further on, I can see the track of that cycle, which has wound its course as well. After quite a bit of thought, I have come to see our marriage as kind of a sham. Not that we didn't both love each other, and not that we didn't both mean the best, but the fact is that if my mother hadn't died, and if Jen hadn't been able to arrive back from far away to comfort me, I don't know if I would have ever actually wanted to propose. I should be clear - none of this was Jen's fault at all, and I think she has loved me and supported me through much more than anyone should. It was I who was perpetrating the sham, albeit unknowingly. I was hurt, and had lost my second parent, my alcoholic, emotionally distant, controlling and manipulative mother. Jen was there for me, and so I looked to fill the hole with something different... but as Jen first pointed out, long ago, and I have slowly come to see, I put her into the same hole, and much of the pain I caused over the ensuing years came from my doing that. Only once I was able to see past that need for someone to fill that hole, to see how I was hurting Jen and Noah and myself, was I able to see that I got married for a lot of wrong reasons. There was one really good, right reason for it - Jen - but unfortunately, I wasn't strong enough (and still am not) to get past all that other garbage to be able to love her the way she deserves.

And so the cycle has run its course again. While Jen and I are technically still married, our marriage has been finished for some time, at least a year or two, I am once again alone, and struggling to figure out what it is I want, or even need, at this point in my life. I have a son to care for, who I love greatly, but who also raises challenges I am not well suited for, temperamentally or emotionally. I am the oldest living member of my family tree, and even my siblings and I are estranged. I have a great group of friends who I try to spend time with, but I am not very close to many of them, much as I would like to be, and I struggle to find ways to deepen those friendships... much less find someone for a truly intimate relationship.

Tonight is the evening of my 40th birthday. I was wondering what I might do to prepare for such an occasion... but I guess a little bit of wool gathering and stock-taking is appropriate, even if it's not quite where I expected to be. I have joked for the last several years that I was trying to stay in the 18-35 demographic, but resigned myself to really face turning 40. I'm not sure if I'm quite there, not yet, but this little journey down memory lane has been quite the trip.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, I guess I look at the 11-year-odd cycles above and see rising and falling, but even while those patterns make up much of my life, they are do not make that life exclusively. I know that whatever direction I am coming from, I am always free to choose to look to the future, and go in new directions, each day. Between my ADD and my well-honed cynicism, its hard to stand in a really optimistic path. (After all, Atlantis has yet to launch this time around... and I really am convinced there is a nuclear 9/11 in our future, never mind whatever crap falls out of the current economic mess.) But even with all those things, there are still so many bright things in the world - sunrises, and long walks in the forest, and talking until late in the night with friends; games to be played, quests to role-play, and battles to be fought; hands to be held, smiles to be shared, and love to be felt.

The Alan Parsons album On Air is, like many of Parsons' works, a thematic album. (You just knew I had to work Alan Parsons in here, right? *grin*) On Air is about the history of air and space travel. The narrative of the album starts with Icarus, wends its way through balloons and early aircraft and military jets. The narrative ends with So Far Away, a song about the space race, whose last verse says...

And so now they cry for justice
As if justice will be done
But the eye up in the sky
Was flying to close to the sun
The challenger has fallen
And the race has now been run....

While this seems a fairly downbeat way to end such a story, the very end of the album is a reprise of the first song, Blue Blue Sky...

I only know what i can see
So i imagine what could be
Where the horizon cuts the air
Look for me out there

Someday i'll touch the blue blue sky
Someday i'll touch the blue blue sky

If i could kiss the earth goodbye
And cruse the never ending sky
Where the horizon cuts the air
Wait for me down there

Someday i'll touch the blue blue sky
Someday i'll touch the blue blue sky

I guess what I'm feeling this evening is the same sort of flow... yes, the Challenger has fallen, and much has been lost. But there is always a new day, and new worlds to explore. As I turn 40, rather than facing a mid-life crisis, I think I see the potential for a mid-life exploration, and maybe even an adventure or two.

Good night, best wishes to everyone, I hope you have a great day on my birthday, and thanks for taking the time to read this. I really enjoyed sharing it with you all.

Tags: alan parsons, challenger, personal history, video
Current Location: Big Blue Chair (Living Room)
Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: None (alas)

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