“This was not easy…when you’re out there, you just want to get back
to your families and friends.” Astronaut Reid Wiseman
After a glorious spin around the moon, four astronauts aboard Artemis II splash down in the Pacific, just a few miles west of San Diego.
We are glued to the live feed on my iPhone, watching this epic adventure come to a sweet splashy end. “My daddy would have loved this,” I exclaim to my husband and friends as we’re munching chips and salsa at our favorite Mexican restaurant.
My father would have turned 102 this year and was probably born “looking up.” I still remember the night he drags my mother and me outside to see “the most amazing thing.” His words, not mine. We wait and wait until suddenly there it is: A little white light creeping across the dark sky. No chop-chop sound like a helicopter. There is no sound at all! What is it daddy? I’m breathlessly curious and scared at the same time. As he answers, his rich baritone voice goes even lower and slower. “THAT…IS…THE…RUSSIANS.” Like what? “How did all the Russians get up there?” My words, not his.
The memory of that Washington D.C. evening is seared into my bones. It also sets the trajectory of my father’s career. Soon after the Sputnik shocker, my aeronautics engineer-writer daddy got a gig at NASA. Apparently that Russian satellite freaked out the folks in the Pentagon too and the space race was on.
He worked in public relations and my father’s claim to fame was that he named the first two American monkeys that went into space (and came back). As the story was reported to me, scientists didn’t know which monkeys would be chosen for the big show until the last minute. Were the volunteer primates jumping up and down screeching “ME! ME! ME?” Well the point is the monkey names had to be non-gender-specific and start with the letters A and B.
My mother’s “complicated” family lobbied for my grandfather’s name (Abe) and my mother’s (Bernice). Well that didn’t happen. Little Able and Miss Baker made the historic round trip. The in-laws were pissed…as usual. My father finally threw up his hands and moved my mother and me as far away as possible — to Los Angeles — where he would spend the rest of his life in the aerospace biz. I’m a California girl because of those monkeys.
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I got to meet the Mercury astronauts and watch a launch from Cape Canaveral. My father and I shared a daddy-daughter passion for Gemini and Apollo. For much of his career he worked at TRW, the company that designed and built the descent engine for the lunar landing module.
Do you remember Apollo 13? The lunar module was supposed to transport two of the guys from the mother ship to the moon’s surface (and back again), but it ended up being the lifeboat that got all three of them safely back to earth after the infamous “Houston-We-Have-A-Problem” near-disaster. Sometime later those three astronauts landed at TRW’s sprawling campus in Redondo Beach, tearfully thanking the men and woman in this noble industry for saving their lives. My father was there too and I could tell that afternoon changed him…
Years later my daddy and I would head to Edwards Airforce Base in the Mohave desert for the shuttle landings. His press pass got us a better view and good seats at the follow-up press conference. I remember people waving their NASA-issued glow sticks at the first night landing. I remember cheering for Challenger…the same space shuttle that would later explode on its tenth flight. I remember my father phoning me with the dreadful news and weeping. Just weeping. He was not a guy who cries.
All these memories are flooding back. What a mishmash of happy, sticky sadness, “I-can’t- believe-it-happened” awe. Just think about the numberless people who have worked so diligently to put human beings “up there” in the first place and moon-adjacent again. But especially I am hands-over-heart grateful to be my father’s daughter.
And what made those iPhone moments at the Mexican restaurant even more special? I am sharing them with people I love.
🌗 🌖 🌗 🌘 🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔
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