Fly me to the moon - Mim memory

Mim & I went to four space shots together - Apollo 12, Apollo 14, Apollo 15 & Apollo 17.  None of them launched in the sort of messy weather Apollo 12 lifted off into, yet none were as magical.  

      

             

Over the four space shots, the two of us became good friends with the Harkins.  On our last visit down, Apollo 17 (the one & only Apollo night launch), we brought a gift - a music box, Snoopy in astronaut gear sitting atop his dog house "moon rocket," playing Fly Me To The Moon.  

     

Snoopy actually beat Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin to the moon.  According to the March 1969 Peanuts comic strip, he landed four months before the the two 2-legs!  (I love the cartoon showing him returning from his adventure - Snoopy confides to the reader that you know he's coming back because he's facing the other way!)


Confession - until getting to know Jim Harkins, we hadn't a clue that Snoopy's relationship with NASA went back to 1967.  After the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA officials asked Charles Schulz if they could use Snoopy as their safety mascot.  Schulz helped design the Silver Snoopy award, a medal presented to aerospace workers who made outstanding contributions toward safer spaceflight operations. 

                   

How many out remember that the Apollo 10 dubbed their command module Charlie Brown & the lunar lander Snoopy?  Or know that NASA used Snoopy as the name for the lunar lander during final rehearsals for Apollo 11's historic landing?  
 

 

Wowed by WRINKLE...

More than mere serendipity lead me to rediscover A Wrinkle In Time, waiting in a friend's bookshelf for me to find & read - again.  (Had no idea when I inadvertently borrowed it  -  it snuck into my stuff  -  it has the first edition dusk jacket!  Dear friend, I'm taking EXTREMELY good care of it!)

Am deep in goose bumps, writing this at 5:46 a.m. of a Monday morning, dragged out sound slumbers 30 minutes ago by the insistent cat calls of two guardian angels that could have been right out of Wrinkle... - unworldly, but very much making their presence known.  "Don't go back to sleep!"  

Goosebumps because I reconnected with Wrinkle... the day after Oprah wrote a HuffPo piece about Billy Bob Thornton's call for us to return to wonder, which lead me to her new series on Belief, which includes a small portion by Mark Nepo who's teaching a workshop at Rowe I have on my 2016 wish list...  Goosebumps!

 

Ya gotta love that the first line of Wrinkle... gives a sly wink of the author's eye, even as it deftly sets the scene - It was a dark & stormy night.  I remember the first time reading that playful opening, an adult in my late twenties rather than a tween, and thinking, "Oooo, this is going to be FUN!"  

Little did I know it would be transforming, too.  Transforming in ways I'd forgotten, until reading it all over again this past weekend, rediscovering a book I'll never let go.  (No worries, Adrienne - I'll get your copy back to you this week!)  To devour Madeline L'Engle's story at the same time Billy Bob is calling on us to return to wonder - this was no mere serendipity!

Over & over, moments of WOW! swept through me, reading the just-right-length book.  (Although one doofus editor suggested she cut her story in half!)  

L'Engle varied in recounting how many publishers rejected her manuscript before it was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux - A LOT.  And there are two different tales about how she connected with John Farrar!  But the connection was made, the book published 2 1/2 years after it first came to her.  

Good decision by Mr. Farrar - Wrinkle... nabbed the 1963 Newberry Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award -and- was among the finalists for the Hans Christian Andersen Award!

 

My favorite illustration of Calvin O'Keefe, Meg & Charles Murray!

It's astonishing how many writers continue singing the praises of A Wrinkle In Time.  I'd check out one article only to be lead to another & another & another.  Clearly, I'm not the only adult still wowed by Madeline L'Engle's story of children who feel like misfits, but find their power by simply (but not easily) being best versions of their true selves.  No small accomplishment, just figuring out what that is!

I started this posting as a short & sweet tribute to a rediscovered book that speaks as strongly to me in 2015 as it did when I first read it in 1980.  Turns out, there are a lot of postings in me waiting to be written about this remarkable book, its impact on me, the power it holds for a stunning number of others.  

How does it WOW me?  Come along, as I share the ways!

Fantasy in Frustration

Fantasy in Frustration - that was the title of my Psych 101 "lab" paper, the paper that was a major risk to write, that nabbed me an A in spite of going counter to the assigned dynamic.  

Lab is in quotes because I never set foot in one writing the paper.  My personal history, my relationship dynamics, my mind & heart - all those served as the lab for that long ago paper, written as I crossed over into my twenties.

It's been many years since I gave serious thought to that ancient assignment.  Came to mind reading Jeff Johnson's so far excellent book, Everything I'm Not Made Me Everything I am: Discovering Your Personal Best. Read the story of someone who went to four or more movies every week, shelling out for a ticket & a bucket of popcorn.  In time, he thought about all the money he was shelling out for something that basically had no return on his dollar, stopped his movie mania, started watching flicks at home, saved himself a bundle.

Interesting story, good example of someone recognizing a drain on his budget & figuring out an acceptable substitute.  Interesting, except it didn't go where I expected it to, knowing my own history.  Jeff didn't give any weight to the time the man was wasting - it was all about the money.  And he didn't ask the biggest question - what was the fellow getting out of it?  Aside from being in the know about the latest releases.

There is a world of difference between watching a movie in a theater, bucket of popcorn balanced on your lap, and viewing them in the privacy of your home.  The first provides a semblance of social interchange, even if you never talk to anyone in the theater.  Others are around you, they're doing the same thing, maybe even eating & drinking the same popcorn & soda.  Thinking that watching films at home is a reasonable substitute voids any semblance of pseudo social connection, which could have been the actual driving force for the movie buff.  Replacing films available via netflix for just-released movies wouldn't enable him to talk about what's hot around the water cooler.  And instead of replacing the time he was using watching flicks with something substantial, the story simply flips the place he's watching from a costly movie theater to the privacy of his home.  

The story got me thinking about my own experience with substituting watching something - albeit on a way small screen - for hard-edged reality.  With me, it was watching television.  Lots of it.

 

The title of my psych paper referred to the fact that even when I wrote it, even well into my marriage, a cast of fictional characters kept me company throughout a typical day.  What would naturally look to others like an astonishing misuse of time & almost every type of energy was essential in keeping me grounded until my psyche became strong enough to actually deal with reality.  And, yes - it took until well into my marriage to get there.  

 

I didn't feel a sense of place in school or in my community & most certainly not in my family.  But slipping into a fantasy life spun out of television viewing with a bit of reading thrown in provided the sense of belonging that every human needs.  Not craves - needs.  Reading the story about the movie-going man brought back to me all that those years of t.v. watching provided my communion-starved soul.  It was pure fantasy, I knew it was pure fantasy, got an A writing about it decades before it ended.  But it served a very real purpose.  It gave me a place when nothing else did.

It's been years since my life was grounded enough I could stand on its terra firma without the use of fantastical aid.  And wondering just what the fellow who watched four or more movies a week got out of his viewing.  Wondering why Jeff Johnson gave full attention to the money being spent, not the time, not the energies.  Because it might have been worth the money if it filled a void.

No one could have turned around my own dependency on imagined others to provide the intimacy lacking in my life.  Getting married merely marginalized it.  Maybe what it took to finally flick it away was having total trust in that intimate (as in spirit, not sex) connection, that it was real & lasting.  

I find myself wanting to know more about the man in the movie theater, about his actual whys.  And to assure him that there can be a life that lets fantasy take its proper place.  I always believed better was possible.  Maybe that's what it takes.  Maybe that's what it takes for anyone who finds a way to handle frustration.  Believing better is possible; leaving open a space for it.

High times & Missy demeanors - Mim memory

This is the moment I've dreaded from writing the first Mim memory - ending the saga of our first trip down to a moon launch.

Oh, heading home wasn't the end of the trip's adventures.  Mim took a marvelous side trip to Williamsburg, which we both already loved thanks to Julian & Tibby, St. John & Regina.  

But the rollicksome part of the road trip ended with our goodbyes to the Harkins.


Writing about that improbable trip down to Apollo 12 was something I savored the thought of sharing yet longed to hold off - writing about it was bittersweet.  Those days - barely over a week - would be the high water mark of our relationship, without a hint of stress discomfort friction, not a single frustrated/frustrating moment between the two of us.  Just high fun & Missy demeanors!  No issues, no baggage, just joy.  

Mim's fine hand - Mim memory in the making

 

For weeks - months - have been dithering over WHAT to wear to the wing-ding we're pairing with watching Mim's online memorial tribute. In July, I almost ordered a tunic with purple iris, a favorite flower.  Just didn't completely click.  Since then, I've been tempted by this outfit or that, but they never fully spoke to me.

This morning, an e-mail arrived informing me that a funky long sleeve T-shirt,  Here Comes The Sun, is on sale at The Greater Good  - one day only. Goose bumps! 

On the trip back from Florida to well-chilled Pennsylvania, we kept saying, "Bring back the sun!"  But on the trip down, we'd ring out - with total joy & excitement - "HERE COMES THE SUN!", drawing out each word.  

 

Definitely seeing my sister's fine hand in this!