Not Quite Cut Out for Space Exploration

Last Saturday, Knox and I went to the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Brent and the girls were having some bonding time at a Girl Scout outing so I decided to play the card that never gets played by mom—the fun card. (It might as well be the Joker card for all the playtime it gets. If anything it’s just there to frustrate as with its insignificance as we shove it back into the tiny paper box next to the instruction card.) I learned later that while we were gazing up at missiles and sitting in the mars landing simulator, Neil Armstrong—more famous moonwalker even than Michael Jackson—passed away at age 82.

Getting to the space center was almost as monumental of a journey as that famed Apollo 11 flight some forty-three years ago. Armed with my Garmin GPS device, I set off. There’s just not a good way to get from Murfreesboro to Huntsville, apparently. My GPS pretty much said, “Pull out of your driveway. Turn a couple of times. Drive 30 miles. Turn again. Drive 30 miles. Turn again. Drive 30 more miles.” I really started wondering if I was going to end up back at my house only to find out that the Space Center was in my backyard all along. Since I was using mainly two-lane highways most of the way, I spent the majority of the two hour trip regretting my route. I’d get behind a flatbed truck that was transporting a house or a farmer driving a tractor while talking on his cell phone. It was painfully slow and Knox—normally an engaging conversationalist—was fully engrossed in his movie. (Side Note: I think I’ve listened to more of their movies than I’ve actually watched. It’s usually entertaining enough—like an old timey radio show but he chose to watch a Tom and Jerry DVD which is made up of sound effects like: Zwing! Ay-ya-ya-ya! Ah-oo-gah! Not exactly a riveting listening experience.)

I was getting bored so I tried to look for interesting sights that would keep me alert. Road kill (why so many armadillos?), diners, auto part shops (One was called Classy Chassis—if you have to say “classy” in the name it probably isn’t), and biker gangs can only keep you interested for so long. We would go through small towns where the speed limit would drop to 35 MPH and there would be one flashing yellow light at an intersection. At one point, even my GPS got bored. She had just said to drive for twenty miles then she started to panic. “Turn right at Independence Avenue.” What? There’s no such road. The only thing on the right is a cotton field. “Turn left at Monument Road.” Left?! I can’t turn left. I’d have to drive across a median. “Make a U-turn.” Why? “Make a U-turn.” No. “Make a U-turn.” She sounded calm and confident but there was an edge to her voice that made me nervous. The map on her display kept changing like she was flipping through her memory for something that she just couldn’t find. Oh how I wished I had a good old fashioned Rand-McNally map right then. I would’ve pulled over and spread it across my steering wheel until I located where in the world I was. Then I would’ve folded it wrong and stuffed it in the glove compartment. Those were the days…

As we got closer to Hunstville, my GPS stopped freaking out and became helpful again. I’m very thankful for this because I think the Hunstville city planners were smoking crack when they planned their city. There are arrows on some of the signs hanging above the interstate that curve in ways my Honda Odyssey was not designed to do. Apparently they all drove Formula One racecars to work everyday. I figured out why they have the giant rocket looming over the space center. It gives drivers a lighthouse to aim for as they meander through the city. When I told Knox that we finally made it to the parking lot, his first words were, “Wow! That was fast.” How I love that boy!

Inside the museum we learned about military spy planes and Blackhawk helicopters. We watched an IMAX movie about Space Junk (All those satellite parts and landing gear are crashing into each other making even smaller debris that will eventually create rings around our planet like the ones around Saturn. Just when you thought there couldn’t be anything else to worry about…) and walked through an exhibit about wooly mammoths. (One of these things is not like the other…) I took pictures of Knox as he pretended to lift giant replicas of missiles and rockets. I bought him astronaut ice cream—a complete mystery to him. “So I eat it? Why isn’t it cold? Do I need a spoon? Why is it chewy?” We rode the Mars simulator multiple times to see if there was a noticeable difference in where you sit. He asked me questions about space and science that I didn’t know but I was quick to use my Wikipedia app before admitting defeat. He held my hand as we walked passed Boy Scout groups and large families. It was completely worth the trip.

Today, I went to a memorial service for a college friend who passed away earlier this week. She was an amazing person—probably the most sincere and humble person I’ve ever known. In these last twenty months of her battle with cancer, she continued to tell us to savor every day, every second that God gives us. I have to wonder how much of my journey with God is like that trip to Hunstville. How much of my thoughts and energy are consumed with worrying that I’m going the wrong way or wishing that every thing, person, and event would just hurry up? I try to guess at God’s plans ahead of time like I’m solving the big ending to a predictable movie only to realize I’m wrong. Consequently, I have to make signs with squiggly arrows to explain how to navigate out of my poor choices when I could’ve eliminated all of the confusion by waiting on God’s guidance in the first place.

Another way I attempted to entertain myself on the trip down was to imagine the day that Knox—the first astronaut to land on Mars—would make a speech while accepting his Presidential Medal of Honor. “And it all started,” he would say, “When my mom took me to the Space Center when I was seven.” When we were leaving I asked him, after seeing that cool stuff, if he wanted to be an astronaut when he grows up. “No. I’m not going up there to clean up all that junk.” It didn’t turn out exactly as I imagined but in the end it was even better. I’m going to try to slow down and appreciate all the little moments that make this life the gift that it is. I wouldn't have wanted to miss that day with Knox for the world--floating junk and all.

Have Patience

When I was little, my sisters and I loved to listen to records on our record player. We weren’t allowed to listen to music that could be categorized as a) current and b) secular and c) Michael Jackson (a.k.a. the trinity of unholiness) so our “playlist” consisted of a very eclectic mix for small children. There were John Philip Sousa marches that gave us that extra energy we needed to clean up our room. We listened to the Andrews Sisters as they sang their rendition of some hilarious polkas. (“We Have No Bananas Today” was one of our favorites.) My mom was crazy about The Carpenters. I can still sing every word of “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Although those albums were secular, they weren’t current so our sensitive ears were safe.

We could also choose from a collection of Christian artists. There was the Bill Gaither Trio singing to us about how we’re all “kids under construction.” There was one really creepy looking album cover of a puppet named Little Marcy. Her puppeteer was sitting next to her at the piano. There was something unnerving about the exaggerated smile on her plastic face—like she was about to slowly turn her head to look at me, Chucky-style. It didn’t help that one of her songs was called “When Mr. Satan Knocks at My Heart's Door” and she sang it in this tinny, superficial voice. We didn’t listen to Little Marcy very often but we did like to listen to “The Music Machine” album. It had a running storyline about some kids and a guy in a band uniform learning about the Fruits of the Spirit. The most memorable song was sung by a snail named Herbert. Being a snail, Herbert sang slow and low, an effect we knew how to create with any album just by switching the speed selector next to the needle arm. (If things had worked out differently, I probably could’ve been a DJ. It’s possible.) The chorus would drone on like this (imagine me singing the following like a depressed gastropod who is sliming slowly forward to his ultimate death): “Have patience. Have patience. Don’t be in such a hurry. When you get impatient, you only start to worry. Remember, remember that God is patient too. And think of all the times when others have to wait for you.” (I bet you never thought I was going to get to the title of the post, did you? Well, you have to have patience sometimes. See what I did there? Golden. This is deep stuff.)

According to my own unscientific observations, patience is harder to come by than ever. With cell phones that can make lists, shop, email, text, and download entire books all while you’re waiting in the car line, we’ve taught ourselves and our kids that we don’t have to wait for anything. “Oh, you’re bored while we’re grocery shopping? Poor baby! How cruel to make you suffer through this errand that will eventually feed you. Here’s my phone. Watch Toy Story 3.” Do you know what my sisters and I did when we went shopping with our mom? We took turns pretending to be blind as the other sisters led us around, bumping into shelves and displays. We entertained ourselves. I rarely wait in any lines any more. If there is more than one person in the line ahead of me at Kroger’s I start looking up at the screen hanging above the door to see if they’re going to open another register. “This is ten minutes of my life and it's wasted! I could be playing Scramble on my phone! Oh, wait, I can do it here in line. Never mind. We’re good. Take your time.”

So here are some intentional ways to teach yourself to be patient.

• Grow a garden. This is a definite exercise in patience. Waiting for tomatoes to ripen can be painful, especially if you miss a day at your ripening vigil and the birds get them first.

• Walk—not drive—to as many places as you can. We walk to school most mornings and home again in the afternoon. It takes us fifteen minutes if we’re going at an easy pace. If I drive, I can be there in about ninety seconds. It takes some planning but the conversations I’ve had with my kids about the day they’re about to have and the one they just finished are priceless.

• Cook from scratch more often. For the most part, I enjoy cooking. There are some nights when things have to be quick but if I can spend an hour and a half or more listening to “All Things Considered” on the radio with an apron tied around my waist, I’m usually pretty satisfied.

Recently, my most trying exercise in patience has been waiting to go and get our son in Africa. We were matched at the beginning of the summer and he’s been a constant in my thoughts ever since. He’ll be two years old in January. For some reason, I’ve got it in my head that I must have him home by his birthday. There’s always the chance that everything will get slowed down and we won’t be able to go by then but I’ve needed a date so that I can process the waiting—even if the date is wrong. There are times when I can understand why God gives me something to wait for so that other things can fall into place first or just so I can see that my personal schedule isn’t in God’s iPhone calendar. He may have a completely different timeframe. My job is to be patient and I hate it but He never said it would be simple or fast. He called Brent and me to bring a child home. It turns out that the paperwork and fingerprinting and writing multiple checks were the easy part. As Tom Petty once sang (Yes, I did eventually listen to more than polkas and The Carpenters),  “The waiting is the hardest part. Every day you get one more card. You take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part.”

Pet Peeves

I’m a pretty easy-going kind of gal but like just about everyone else who has ever been in the same room with another human being for more than five minutes, I have pet peeves. Sometimes I let the little, insignificant habits of other people gnaw at my nerves until I want to plug up my ears and scream obscenities. (Ironically, screaming obscenities is one of my pet peeves. What a hypocrite!)

I’ve tried to look at these annoyances with empathy and understanding but it can be really difficult. For instance, when I pull up behind a pick-up truck with “R.I.P. Tommy/ 1965-2007” written in Gothic letters on the back window I try to think about how nice it is that this driver has dedicated his Dodge Ram to Tommy but all I can think of is: why?! And why was the tribute placed so precariously near Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbs) peeing on the Chevy logo?

I also have to whisper words of restraint to myself when I get around an effusively proud mom who is just waiting for you to say something that will let her segue into a treatise of her kid’s many glorious attributes. She operates like a search engine. If you say the right word, she’ll connect it with a brag: “Have I read any good books lately? Well, no…but Little Johnny is reading War and Peace. It’s true and he’s only 4!”  Of course, every accomplishment of our kids reflects on us as parents. (The flaws are someone else’s fault. I blame pesticides in produce and the Liberal Media.) So it only makes sense for moms to recount their child’s heroics in the 1^st person plural. “We are counting to 100 now” (It’s about time—you’re 30 years old.) “We just made a 100 on our spelling test!” (Okay, spelling can be hard for some grown-ups…) “We pee-peed and poo-pooed in the potty today!” (Whaaa?!)

Another one of my pet peeves is when people use the word “literally” incorrectly. Here are three examples that I have heard lately made by a reputable historian, an NPR newscaster, and an alpaca farmer:

• He was literally straddling two continents. (It was Africa and Europe. That dude had long legs.)

• Greece has literally killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. (I hope they made a Greek omelet with it.)

• When I saw my first alpaca, I literally stopped dead in my tracks. (Who knew alpaca were so dangerous?)

I could go on and on with my list: there’s the dinner music of slurpy, crunchy eating noises made by dining companions; people saying “duh” when they hear something earnest yet obvious; drivers flipping the bird at fellow drivers; and so on. But the thing that really peeves me is when people always have to be right. We’ve all met Mr. Know-it-All. He’s the world’s foremost living expert and he wants to make sure that everyone knows that he knows everything. As a service to the community, he’ll correct you if he thinks you’re wrong. While I was listening to the radio the other day, I heard a news anchor report that a tractor-trailer crashed in upstate New York spilling several tons of yogurt on the highway. The man-on-the-scene corrected her saying that it was actually Greek yogurt and it was actually 18 tons. Thanks for the vital information, Poindexter. He just couldn’t let it go without having the last word.

I asked my husband if he has any pet peeves and he said he couldn’t really think of any. “Sure you do,” I told him. “There’s got to be something that people do that really gets on your nerves.” He said there wasn’t anything. How is that possible? Half-joking, he said, “I just get along with everybody.” And I suppose that’s his key to contentment. He doesn’t let those little things ruin his day or make him mad. He’ll go a long way with that kind of attitude but I have to admit that kind of gets on my nerves.

Grandma's House

(Disclaimer: I want to be as true to life as I can but my memories of my grandparent’s house may not be totally accurate. Still, they have a fuzzy-edged clarity that is lacking in any other memories from my childhood. From these family trips, I can recall smells, sights, and sounds that I can match up to feelings of fear, wonder, and happiness. It’s a simplicity of emotion reserved mainly for children. For this reason, when my sisters and especially my mom read this they will most likely disagree with certain aspects of my recollections. To this I say: Get your own blog.)

When I was growing up, my family would drive to Illinois once or twice a year to visit my grandparents. It was a long trip from Kentucky where we lived until I was seven and an even longer trip from Tennessee. I don’t remember much about the actual car ride but I do know it didn’t involve DVDs or iPods. We were happy just to listen to cassette tapes on our Panasonic tape player. (Ok…we probably weren’t exactly happy. We still drew imaginary boundary lines in the seat to emphasize to each other how unhappy we were to be in the car all day together.) We spread out all over our faux wood side-paneled Station Wagon—lying on the floorboards and sitting backwards in the rear. I could usually tell when we were getting close because the endless cornfields would begin to give way to neighborhoods that looked like my grandparents’ with grassy alleys in between modest wooden houses. And there always seemed to be the smell of burning leaves—a smell I still associate with Danville, Illinois to this day.

When we finally arrived, my grandmother would be waiting for us at the back door. She’d reach down to hug and kiss us, then she would usher us into the hallway leading to the kitchen. The kitchen transformed throughout the day following the rhythm of hungry, active kids. In the morning it smelled like fried eggs with lots of pepper and hot coffee. The Today Show played on the small television set. A large mahogany and leather rocker sat near the doorway to the dining room. This was grandpa’s chair. He would sit there as he peeled an apple with his pocketknife and feed the peelings to our scruffy mixed-breed poodle named Rusty. At suppertime, the kitchen held in the warmth and scent of fried chicken and creamed potatoes.

At some point during our week there, we would be forced to go through the door that stood innocently at the corner of the kitchen. This door opened to a set of rickety, wooden stairs that led to the (gulp) basement. It took up the entire underside of the house and appeared to have been carved out of a giant stone slab. As I cautiously made my way down the stairs, trailing my hand along the bumpy, dusty stonewall, I could almost hear it whispering to me that it wanted nothing more than to become my tomb. Grandma had her ancient washer and dryer down there along with a stand up shower. The walls were lined with Mason jars and there was one small door along the top near the stairs that led outside. (Note: Anytime you are in a room that seems to whisper to you about your impending doom, be sure to locate all exits. If people in horror movies employed this rule they would be more likely to escape.) We were in the basement because—although it was the mid to late ‘70s and early ‘80s and there was some kind of rule that everyone must have greasy hair—we eventually had to take a shower. Grandma always stocked the shower with shampoo displaying a picture of a green apple on the bottle that smelled like sweetness and sunshine—an ironic touch down in that dank basement. We showered as quickly as we could so that we could run upstairs to safety with wet hair.

Other than the kitchen, the main floor held my grandparents’ bedroom, the only other bathroom in the house, the dining room with the large round pedestal table and the living room. I always felt like the living room ceiling was about a mile high. There were beautiful old books on the built-in shelves and Grandma had lamps on every end table. One of the lamps was made to look like a gnarled old tree. It had one of those fake birds you find in the floral section of craft stores perched at the top and a sleek, black panther stretched out in one of the crevices at the bottom of the lamp. It never seemed strange to me that this lamp should present a predator vs. prey story. I just liked to look at it. Grandma also had her old, worn KJV Bible on one of the tables. Once, I put my cup on top of the Bible and I was chastised severely for using God’s Word as a coaster.

One of the things that my sisters and I loved to do was to hop along the thick sheets of plastic that covered the carpet and rugs in the living room and dining room. Grandma had created a track of these sheets to protect the high-traffic footpaths. The main goal was to only step on the plastic without accidentally lifting a corner of it revealing the spiky underside that kept the mats in place. If you stepped on the spikes barefooted you were definitely the loser. Off of the living room was the downstairs front porch. It was screened-in and housed a porch swing and metal chairs. We went out there to play a Holly Hobby board game and a game called Tiddlywinks.

On the far side of the living room was an impressive staircase. It had a landing with a little window looking outside and a darkly, polished banister. I would start at the top and walk gracefully down, pretending that all eyes were turning to see the beautiful lady make a grand entrance into the room. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and an office with a twin-size cot. Off of the larger bedroom, there was a sleeping porch with a day bed and all of my mom’s old toys and books. We were allowed to play with her Barbies with their heavily lined eyes and fashionable outfits. We would dress them up as nightclub singers, nurses, and society ladies ala Jackie Kennedy. Grandma had also saved my mom’s paper doll set. It included two guys and two girls. They had names like Bob and Pam and we loved dressing them up. My daughters have several sets of paper dolls and I bet none of them are a complete set. It’s amazing how meticulously my mom cared for her things.

We spent most of our time during our visit on the upstairs porch listening to 45s on my mom’s little red record player, dressing up dolls and reading or—if the weather was nice—playing outside. The house was built in the corner of the lot, creating large back and side yards. There was a neatly trimmed hedge that ran along two sides of the property. It looked like it fell right out of an episode of “Leave it to Beaver. “I could just imagine Ward Cleaver with his hedge clippers pausing to impart some bit of wisdom to his bungling, young son. There was a substantial garden complete with grape arbors in the back corner diagonal from the house. Next to the garden was grandpa’s workshop. My grandpa was a carpenter. Massive snowball bushes grew near the doors of his shop and they attracted every bee in town. Because of the bees, I rarely went near his shop and never got to see him in action.

My grandfather died when I was in the fourth grade and my grandmother came to live with us soon after. I never got to see their house when I was old enough to appreciate the intricacies of grandpa’s workmanship inside or the architecture of the house outside. Now that I have no grandparents left living I have begun to understand what most people know only after it’s too late. My grandparents were real people with a long, rich history that I’ll never know. I’ve learned from my mom that my grandmother had a bleak childhood as a product of a broken home. When her parents divorced, she and her siblings were dispersed amongst relatives and she went to live with her grandparents. Years later she returned to her parents after they found religion and were re-married. My grandfather became the man of the house early on when his father unexpectedly died. His mother opened her home to strangers as a boardinghouse so that she could support my grandfather and his two sisters.

When I was little, all of my grandparents were what they did for me or gave to me. My grandmothers were chocolate chip cookies and handmade nightgowns. My grandfathers were Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and wooden blocks. As I grew up and I began to realize that the world didn’t turn because I needed it to, I still didn’t appreciate what my grandparents represented. These elderly family members blended in to the background of my young adult life. Now that they are all gone, I wish so much that I could sit down with them and ask them questions about their lives. What did they wish to become? What were their greatest disappointments and accomplishments?

Some day, I hope to be a grandma. I want to have that special recipe that my grandkids ask for every time they come to my house. I want to spoil them and tell them to sit up straight and read them Bobbsey Twins books and comb out their hair after they take a shower in my not-scary basement. I want them to feel safe in my wrinkled, liver spotted hands and know that I see in them something rare and precious that no one else can see. In that way, I will atone for the lack of acknowledgment I gave to these four individuals who were necessary to my existence.