What if You Felt Great?

I was just reading online about the new movie about the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, the first astronauts to make it there and back, safely.

Obviously, it was such a big deal. I remember the day they landed on the moon. I was standing in front of Steven Rinkoff’s house on Union Road in Spring Valley, New York and I looked up at a 4:00 moon and I thought, “There are people walking around up there.” But I also remember thinking that the idea of making myself think about something that was not obviously visible to me was very similar to making myself think about anything else that was not obviously visible to me. Ultimately, the abstraction of knowing that something was going on that I could not see did not make me actually feel any closer to it. In fact, I blankly felt, “Well, that’s going on up there. But I’m here and we can’t communicate. So, it’s really like any other day.”

Years later, I went to college and living on my dorm floor was the daughter of one of those astronauts. I won’t spell out her name here so she will not be able to Google it. It was not unusual to face the children of ambassadors, writers, inventors, and work-a-day physicians at my college. But there was something quite fascinating about living on the same floor as a woman whose father had been to the moon. She seemed like she was touched with some sort of special moon dust. She, at least, seemed kind of like something out of science fiction. She was also flat chested and depressed. Dean, who was a senior, lived in a single next door to her and he had a crush on her. I had a crush on Dean. I tried to steer his attention away from her, the daughter of a moon visitor. She knew what I was up to, but she didn’t mind because she was not that interested in Dean. Because of our Dean connection, we became friendly, though most of the other kids on the floor wouldn’t talk to her much because she really was quite morose with depression and possessed a personality that could most generously be described as “Southern Tragic”. At that time in my life, I was not the happiest soul, either, so I was a bit drawn to her. However, I was much more optimistic than she seemed ever capable of, so I was cautious. Besides, she did not seem to have the hookup for intimate friendship.

As often happens with the disaffected and the miserable, I saw an ad for a Communist Party meeting at Harvard and I decided that I just had to go. I started asking around, seeing who wanted to join me. Understand, this was at the height of the Reagan era and students were celebrating their inner CEO, looking askance at my bong, and planning for lives of professional sameness. The astronaut’s daughter was the only one who showed any excitement to go to a Communist Party meeting. She said she would go with me. Friday night.

I thought, “How cool. Here she is the daughter of this man who has actually been on the moon. And she is more depressed than I am. And she is going to go with me to a Communist Party meeting. In Harvard Square. Maybe.”

When the evening came for the meeting, I knocked on her door and she opened it, in her yellow, flannel, lightly floral nightgown. She said she was sick and couldn’t go. I could tell she was either faking illness because she got cold feet or she was, maybe, just really depressed. I could also tell that she knew full well that this was the night and she had not forgotten about it. Her refusal to go proved to me what I had always suspected about her--that she was not a real rebel, nor was she brave. She was just like everyone else at my pre-professional college. Watching her ass. Making sure she didn’t do anything wrong. I stood at her door and I pushed her for the truth. I really wanted to know why she didn’t want to go. Then, by the darting of her eyes and the clenching of her hand against the edge of the open door, it became clear to me that there were millions of reasons why she did not want to go. Without divulging the words (but by observing her behavior) I could tell she did not want to go because she thought better of it after agreeing; that when she agreed, it was only on a lark and not something she took seriously; that I was a weirdo for wanting to go at all; that it was a pain for someone who is depressed to get dressed on a Friday and schlep down to Harvard Square; and lastly, because of who her father is, a hero.

Of all these things that I saw flash through her eyes, she only said one thing to me, the ultimate trump card that would end my inquiry as to why she was in flannel and not all pumped up for the big event, “I can’t go because of my father.”

I nodded my head in total understanding. But I gave her a look that meant, “You have to get out from under this famous father shadow or you are doomed.”

It was the only time she ever mentioned her father to me. She did know, though, that everyone talked about her only in terms of who she was: the daughter of a moonraker.

I walked away from her door. She went back to bed in her flannel nightgown. I decided not to go to the meeting either because I had no one to go with. Plus, there was a good movie playing at the pub and I didn’t really feel like going down to Harvard Square either. And furthermore, I was relieved that she bailed on me because I didn’t have to go, either. I was also afraid, having a mini-red-scare, post McCarthyism metabolism spike going on in my lizard stem. That passed.

Then, I felt very insignificant because her father had been to the moon and my father had mostly been to Paramus. But then I felt relieved about my father. I would never have an excuse to not do something because of who my father was. Nothing hangs over me. I am wonderfully free. Even if I ever become very depressed, I cannot use my father as a copout.

I do not think she ever finished college. In fact, she had a nervous breakdown and had to leave school. I remember the day the ambulance came to haul her off. She was the second one that year. The first one was an older, goofy looking guy, back in the fall. I felt kind of sad about it. But I also felt that if she had gone to the Communist Party meeting, not to become a Communist, but to just stand up and say, “Fuck it. I can go to a Communist Party meeting whenever I feel like it,” she might not have had that nervous breakdown. In my world view, I felt like I was her savior but she chose not to be saved.

It was also rumored that she had one shriveled ovary which caused her to have this low register voice and a bit of a tomboy demeanor. The guys on the hall nicknamed her “Estro” , short for estrogen, more specifically meaning a deficiency of estrogen. They never said it to her face, but I am sure she heard about it from someone.