I’m sitting in the airport next to a boy who is almost a teenager. A boy with messy blonde hair, with a nose covered by freckles, with legs as long as a giraffe. He’s reading Michael Creighton and the book looks to be approximately 8 million pages long and would I even pick up a book that big, probably not, but he is totally into that thing. He smiles as he reads and I see braces with blue rubber bands, a color that he chose by himself in an appointment that he attended alone and also, he scheduled his returning visit at the front desk and put it on his calendar without any parental participation. Blue for the Dodgers, obviously. He doesn’t yet look like a man but I can’t say that he resembles a mere boy. He’s a teenager, well, almost, and this is his teenage trip. Just yesterday I told him he was going to be a big brother for the first, second, third time—wasn’t it? The day before that I sent him to a kindergarten in New York City that was surrounded by chain links but was taught by a real-live Disney princess who sang and danced and loved my baby boy. A few days before that he was born, right? And his brain was bleeding and they told me he’d die and I cried, oh how I cried in my broken body that had just birthed a sick and magical little creature. Today we are in the airport but tomorrow he will go to high school and the next day after that he will graduate and leave. Is that how this works? He’ll just leave, like he’s an adult now and knows how to live life without the mom that wrote notes in his lunchbox and signed permission slip forms and at almost 13, took him to see space in Florida? My heart is full and fearful because wasn’t it just yesterday? And will it really feel like tomorrow?
***
Last night I slept on the couch. James was working on his computer next to me and we were watching a documentary about Ivan the Terrible and of course I fell asleep because that’s what I do when you turn on the TV. I was cuddled in my favorite Dodgers blanket and I had a freshly washed face and freshly brushed teeth and even though the minky fabric on my favorite Dodgers blanket was a bear to sew it’s honestly the comfiest thing that ever existed and bam! I was asleep without even recognizing a slow blink. I vaguely remember him shaking me, urging me to join him in bed, and I vaguely remember batting the air with my hand and saying something mature and profound like, “Go away!” and then I woke up this morning at 6 am, 30 minutes before I was set to run 8 miles and 12 hours before I was taking a red eye across the country and I’m realizing that I probably shouldn’t watch shows on the couch anymore because I’m not to be trusted, it’s just not a good idea.
***
The giggle he made when we lifted off. It was the one I remember from my toddler who watched the Disney movie Cars 100 times and owned 10 different Lighting McQueen hot wheels and would roll with laughter at everything Mater muttered. His giggle, just now, it was soft and high and rolled for a few minutes before stopping with an audible smile. He doesn’t remember flying—this from the jet-setting kid who ate fries on top of the Eiffel Tower and lived near the pride and prejudice pastures of Cambridge and city hopped for his formative years. We’ve lived in California for six years now, our last flight as a family when we moved from New York, and most of our traveling these days is done with the magical minivan overflowing with children and cousins and friends. But that giggle—oh that giggle from my teenager who I still can’t believe isn’t a toddler. That wondrous sound makes me want to book another flight for him, me by his side.
***
Wonder, the only word that appropriately describes him at 10,000 feet in the air. He peers through his window and wants wishes begs to share every last thing he sees. He gasps—a volcano! He points at a cloud, and another, and another. Is that snow? THAT’S SNOW! Is that water? THAT’S WATER! And boats, there are boats. He sees lights and towns and darkness and he can’t sleep, he doesn’t want to read, he’s got no business on the TV screen in front of him because look at this world out the window. He sees the space needle and laughs with glee. Happiness. Wonder.
***
I mention that we may want to buy a few staples from the store so that we don’t have to search for food while we’re enjoying the surf. A picnic! For the beach! Never have I ever been ribbed as hard as I was by those two, who started listing all of the beach fare we should buy for our grand vacation: sandy Cheeto puffs, soggy pb and j’s, stale red vines and warm grapes, preferably soft. I made sure I came back to the car with every last item on their list and watched them eat it with a smile on the beach, serves them right!
***
The water was not warm, the liar. Maybe compared to the North Pole. Maybe compared to Alaska. He says compared to the Los Angeles beach we visited last week but no, no, don’t believe him because it is still cold. If it doesn’t feel like a bathtub it is cold for me and so this may as well be Antarctica. But no, that didn’t stop me, no sirree, we boogie boarded and played over/under waves and I screamed really loud when a crab walked over my foot and he pretended to be a shark and attack me under water and the sunscreen and salt made our eyes burn a little bit and it was cold until it wasn’t. It was cold until it was perfect.
***
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Universal Parents:
· The dad at breakfast watching his little boy eat strawberry banana yogurt with a spoon too big for his little hand and he was just in awe, that dad, you could see his eyes twinkling as that little boy made a mess of his face and it was the look of pure love.
· The mom holding her phone high in the air for over an hour waiting to take a video of her daughter who was riding the biggest rollercoaster this park has to offer and when every cart went up the big, big hill she’d say, “Is she on this one? She’s gotta be on this one!” and she’d start recording and then when the cart went down the big, big hill she’d say, “Nope, probably the next one!” I wonder what she planned to do with that video of her daughter. And also I wonder what she did with the 500 videos of complete strangers riding the ride which now lived in her phone.
· The dad waiting in a massive line for a ride that will definitely not thrill him and watching his daughter do math problems on some sort of learning app on a cell phone—Hers? His?—and answering them correctly one after another after another. She was probably seven? Eight? And some of the problems were harder than others but no matter because he was smiling wider looking at that girl and that screen than if she was doing calculus. Perhaps he’s an accountant and she’s following her father’s footsteps. Perhaps he’s a high school dropout and she’s going to be the family’s first graduate.
· The mom who was screaming, holy cow was she screaming, at her kids about how they’re ungrateful and spoiled rotten and a bunch of whiners and she never should have brought them here and she’ll never bring them here again and maybe they really are bad kids but also they were little enough to be in strollers and she was screaming and sure making a scene and I thought maybe, perhaps, they should get in line for a Butter Beer and cool off for a moment.
· The mom who pushed her child in a wagon to the front of a line for a movie and when the attendant said, “The wagon needs to be parked over here” she quietly pointed down at her son for him and me and God to see and there was a little smiling beautiful boy with braces for legs and he said, “Oh, um, you can bring in the wagon” and she said thank you and then just quietly and calmly went into the theme park theatre to show her baby a show.
· The dad in line for popcorn right in front of me (I was buying a pretzel with salt and cheese, please) who was so calm and compassionate and cool when his young son said, “I’m bored, can we just leave and go sit in the car instead?” and he answered that “if we wanted to just sit in the car for entertainment we could have parked on the side of the highway and saved ourselves $500” and then he looked at his wife and they both got huge smiles on their faces and kind of rolled their eyes and he put his arm around her and I almost cried it was so normal and beautiful.
***
My teenager has an exceptionally high tolerance for flips and spins and rollercoaster speeds that perhaps he inherited from me but also, perhaps, he stole from me because when I was his age I remember wanting faster, spinnier, scarier and now, uh-hem, I deep breathe and pray through every ride and once or twice cried grateful tears when it finished because I found myself still quite alive, hallelujah. He liked all of them except one which went straight up like a space rocket and then straight down like a kamikaze fighter jet and while I neither liked the up nor down he said he found the down park quite exhilarating but the up part totally miserable. At 13 he is brave and adventurous and brilliant and also, incredibly self-aware. He doesn’t like seafood. He doesn’t like tight spaces. He doesn’t like rides that go straight up. He loves sugar and sweets. He loves adventure and excitement. He LOVES to move fast! To know yourself is such a gift, a talent even, and watching him make sense of the things that are woven into the fabric of his person and things that he unapologetically will not stand for is inspiring. He is confident, but not rigid, and just so good.
***
There was an old man pushing his wife in a wheelchair around the Kennedy Space Center. He had white hair spilling from below his baseball cap and it was orange, if I remember right, maybe salmon? He was tall and strong with a mustache under his nose and a round belly under his chest and his t-shirt was tucked into his jeans with a belt, just like my grandpa used to wear. I was standing near the front of a dark room, about to watch a movie about the Artemis missions, when from the corner of my eye I saw him pushing his wheelchaired wife to the front, whispering something in her ear, and then slowly, calmy, carefully backing himself to the rear of the room to watch the video himself. It was his eyes that got me, the eyes that sparkled and smiled not at the amazing video presentation before us in surround sound but that his wife, the woman he must have loved for such a long, beautiful life, got to witness it from the front row. Love is as remarkable as space.
***
A few questions for an astronaut:
· How do you go to the bathroom?
· What happens to your bathroom?
· When you go on a spacewalk are you hooked onto the ship?
· What happens if you get sick in space?
· Has anyone ever died from sickness in space?
***
It was called GOES-T, and could it get any better than this real rocket being launched into real space sharing a name with the real teenager by my side celebrating his birthday by watching this bucket list smashing event? No, it actually couldn’t. The trip was planned around this launch, because how cool would it be for a kid who goes by T to see the launch of a rocket that’s called GOES-T?! But best laid plans, am I right? Two weeks ago I learned that the launch had been delayed by two hours and since we now had exactly zero minutes of wiggle room between the launch of the rocket that would bring a satellite to space and the launch of the plane that would bring us back to Sac I was feeling equally nervous and bummed. Should we risk it? Are we crazy? Our flight left at 6:40 pm and the airport was exactly one hour from where the rocket was launching at 4:38 pm. Sane people would have just gone to the airport and YouTubed the launch but we had to try and the answer to that other question, yes, we are crazy. I warned both boys that if it was delayed at all (the launch window is two hours from the starting time) we had to leave, because for all we knew they could scratch the launch altogether. But then, as if GOES-T knew it was T’s special day, it launched at exactly 4:38 pm, not delayed by the wind or the clouds that were threatening a minute here or a minute there, and we stood in a park full of local Floridians and jumped and screamed and cried and sang and prayed for our good fortune, because this is exactly how I hoped we would be ending our fairytale teenage trip with T. We drove to the airport blasting Starman and Space Jam and Space Oddity and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rocket Man and we sang at the top of our lungs, even when I didn’t know the words and had to make up silly rhymes until the eye rolling from the driver seat and back seat were unbearable. I was sipping my fountain Diet Coke and telling T that I had lived 36 whole years without ever seeing a rocket launch and here we were, seeing one on the very same day, and wasn’t this the best day ever? Did we pay for our craziness upon arriving at the airport? Did we get stuck in security, have to beg for cutsies in line, sprint through the airport with our tennis shoes still in hand and arrive at the plane within seconds of the flight attendant closing the cabin door? Well, yep. But did we see a real rocket launch and not miss our flight? Also (phew), yep. #worthit #missioncompleted #firstteenagetrip
