R Is for Rocket

This week, the country remembers the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing.

What I remember is how my parents got me and my brothers up in what was, to us, the middle of the night.  And we came downstairs in our footie pajamas.  And some ghostly men jumped around on the TV.

But it was the start of something.  My brother Peter became obsessed with space adventures, in the way that sensitive little boys still do.  His favorite toy, Billy Blastoff, led expeditionary missions to the top of the dogwood tree, accompanied by a motley crew composed of my dolls in their torn dresses and rat's nest hair.  An ice cream truck sang as it circled the block.  The summer air beat down on the cement sidewalks and tiny green yards.  We left Billy mid-moon-conquest and went to Elmer's Store for Hoodsie's ice cream cups with those little wooden spoons.

Today, my nephews believe in space, though the real-life moon walk and the workaday Space Shuttle with its plumbing problems are inextricably wound together with the fictional film world of robots and heroes. It's both the past AND the future, their version of the Wild West and King Arthur's court, and a place they could envision actually growing up and visiting.

Eldest Nephew, another Peter, eight,  is a small, enthusiastic acolyte of the Talmud of George Lucas,  but is patient with slow adults who don't know a Tusken Raider from a Millenium Falcon from a Darth Maul.  He relate the convoluted, generally disturbing family relationships of the Skywalker family with a scholar's delight.  Fortunately, the kid is also a solid, attentive little athlete, a swimmer and a Little League pitcher, which may preserve him from the dark thickets of nerdom in which I and his namesake  uncle wandered as teens.

For little Peter, the mythology of the stars and the starships that sail them is about competence and confidence.  Follow the directions, take good notes, practice your light sabre swoops, and rescue of the Empire is sure to follow. 

Tender-hearted Milo, five, has not watched actually watched "Star Wars" yet (too potentially scary), but he likes to browse a picture book version and name all the characters.  That's Han, he says, precisely. He rescues Luke from Darth Vader.  That's R2D2--he's a good robot.  Calm and sweet--a confidence in rescue from adversity I hope never gets sucked away.

Little Brendan prefers "Wall-E."  How a three year old makes sense of the idea that we are possibly wasting space, and wasting Earth, I do not know.  He sat beside me one day, a day when sadness wafted through the air at an adult plane,  and asked me to watch the movie three times in a row.

Again and again, the small robots wandered a desolate, junk-filled Earth, then blasted off into space and found the squishy remnants of the human race, and the last remaining green plant, and brought them back home to start over again. 

For Brendan,  as for so many of us, space is a place where we might get it right--fix things, and start again.

I just found this clip, among the many that are being played today, ironically enough, with Walter Cronkite narrating.   Good trip beyond the stars, Walter.

"The least of us are improved by the things done by the best of us." Obi Wan would agree.