NOTE: Aerial view of the STS-2 Columbia launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida taken by astronaut John Young aboard NASA's Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA).
NOTE: Picture of our family last Saturday, May 27, 2023, as my son graduated from high school.
You don’t think about this.
You don’t.
But it’s a lot of work to get that thing into orbit.
After all, the shuttle, fully loaded, weighs 4.5 million pounds. 4.5 million pounds. A team of specialists had been so careful, loading and loading and loading with critical payload.
It’s a lot. Which is why it takes not one, but two solid-state booster rockets to get that bad boy up where it needs to go.
That’s where we came in.
Her and me.
Me and her.
Together. Always together.
If she had ever been afraid, she never let me know. But I was afraid most days. Afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. God. What if I ran out of fuel, and I sputter’d out, halfway up, leaving her and the boy to go cartwheeling back down through the atmosphere?
But wouldn’t you know it - miracle upon miracle - I never ran out of fuel. Never did.
And now. Now? Now? Well, she and I had been doing this for so long, it’s impossible to remember our lives before this. What did we do before this? Just sit around? Go out for leisurely meals? I can’t even remember. Those were different people. It seems impossibly long ago.
I heard the announcement. I heard the cheering. Orbit reached, they said. Milestone something or other.
I did something - and I don’t often do this - but I just took a second. Stopped. Paused. Looked. The view was something else. Magnificent is too weak a word. I traced the billowing white trail behind us, marking where we’d come in sharp relief against the cobalt sea. I could scarcely believe it. How far up we were.
And then I felt it.
A spit. A sputter.
My heart did the same, inside my chest.
Our fuel was almost out.
No.
No.
It’s too soon.
I looked over at her. She’d felt it too. I watched as tears welled up in her eyes.
I remember the first time he made her tear up like that. We were preparing to move, that next Saturday from our cramped apartment to a house. A house! Where we could turn one of the bedrooms into a nursery. Paint it a neutral yellow with classic Winnie the Pooh decor, like she always wanted. I had taken the day off work to work on it.
She called me. She was crying. Happy tears.
“I think I felt the baby move,” she said. She said it was like little butterflies, fluttering in her stomach. I sat down, on a crate. Shook my head in amazement.
Three months along. They’d always been tethered.
<BAM>
The first of the four connecting bolts that anchored us to him exploded.
I remembered the gliding rocking chair in the nursery. Why this memory? I don’t know. Like a lottery ball in my memory, it’s what popped out. I am there, in that chair, holding him. He is barely longer than my body was wide. Forearm to forearm. I am singing to him.
I’m right here.
I’m not going anywhere.
And even if you think I am.
I’ll be right back.
I remembered the running document I kept on my desktop of his first words.
Ball
Eye
More
I remembered how he simply would not fall asleep if he were alone. I had to hold him until he was asleep, or sit outside his crib and let him hold my fingers through the slats until sleep loosened his grip. I could practically see myself, in that yellow room, leaning against the wood support, the faint light of the summer evening. God, to go back to then.
The second bolt detonated.
No.
No.
I tried to hold on.
I grabbed his arm. I remembered putting him to bed. That was my job. My joy. The best part of my day. The best part of my life. Every night. He wanted to hear stories. Oh, how he loved stories. I told him every single one I knew. Including the very best ones. Ones with Lightsabers, and the Force. Stories that I loved. Stories that had made me. Stories about Fathers and Sons. And one Father and one Son in particular.
I remembered the nightmares, that frequently came. The futon in the living room, dragged off its frame onto the carpet. Blankets and pillows piled on. He would grab my arm, to be sure of me. I was not allowed to turn over, with my back to him. “I need your face toward me, Daddy,” he’d say.
“I’m right here,” I would say, whispering prayers for peace, reminding him that I wasn’t the only One there.
The third bolt detonated.
I remembered the tough years. Those middle years, before their footing is sure. Why does this normal process have to be so damn painful? Social scars. Some self-inflicted. Some, cruel words from a cruel world. I remembered him on his bed, eyes wet. He’d messed up. Or had been tried, and found wanting. He was trying so hard to figure out what it meant to be a friend. To have a friend. I had been trying to say something wise about analyzing the patterns of rejection, like a map, to see if the words that sliced him open might help him identify what to stop doing. Or something. Dumb of me. Who wants an emergency room doc lecturing you? I was trying to help, but I was not.
“Dad, if it’s okay, can you not give me advice right now,” he said. “I just need to know that somebody likes me.”
Of course. Stupid me. I remember the way he felt collapsing into me, like I was a refuge. Oh, my Son. Flesh of my flesh. Bone of my bone. Blood of my blood. I am so glad that God made me your Daddy.
Then, a flash. High school, football games, laziness, tests and grades, fights for freedom, and deep belly laughter from all of us, especially his sister. Oh, how he made her laugh. Oh, how that healed his mama’s heart, to watch her little girl’s eyes dance at her silly brother.
The final bolt.
No.
No.
It’s too soon, I said to her.
It’s not, she said.
And just like that she let go.
She was always braver and smarter than I.
For a moment, we were locked, side by side as gravity and propulsion conflicted. And then I felt myself falling.
Falling away.
My face is toward you, son! I shouted.
He could not hear me, though. The sound of his own engines igniting roared.
Home was behind me.
Oh, what a home we had built. Oh, what a home. The joy of my years. It was all her vision, she saw it. What it could be. It was the best of us.
But now?
How could it be home, anymore, without him in it?
How?
I could see no possible future better without him close to us. I felt myself falling.
Falling.
Empty, now.
“You did it,” the Voice said. “It’s what you were made to do.”
"I didn’t know it would be over so soon,” I said.
“This was always the mission.”
I looked down at the place where he had been. So close to me. Right next to me. For so long. Gone.
“Remember all that is inside him. Carefully loaded. You placed much of it. And there are people who need it.”
I knew that was true. I did.
But what about me? I am empty.
“For now,” the Voice said. “Only just for now.”
My face is toward you, I said, to my little boy.
I said it over and over again
as I fell away
and watched
my son’s trail of bright fire above me.
Selah. Thank you for this, Dave.