BOOM BOOM

8:44 on a beautiful May morning. 

The shuttle Atlantis falls across our coast at over 400 miles per hour, leaving behind her final BOOM BOOM to rattle our windows one last time.  25 years of service, now in the past. 

And the tears flow freely down my cheeks

It is not the first time a shuttle has brought tears to my eyes. 

I cried when the second shuttle launched and I realized the word "fleet" actually applied. 

I cried the day I brought the Chick home from the hospital, holding her up to the TV to watch the first woman Ride into orbit.  Tears flowed partly in envy that day.  I missed by a decade being the flea to jump out of the jar.  But more so, much more so, I cried with joy.  Here was proof irrefutable that this girl-child, twelve hours old, did not have to be born a son to be allowed opportunity in this new world.

We moved permanently to the Space Coast the next year.  I cried, feeling priveledged to see such a sight, every time a shuttle rode piggy back over my little shoebox house, heading home to our thick Florida atmosphere.  My home.  My atmosphere.

And we all cried, unable to look away, watching the pieces of Challenger fall from a winter blue sky.  

I don't have any personal attachment to the shuttle.  Not really.  Living here, everyone knows someone who does, of course.  Friends helped design it, program it, launch it, promote it, and put it to bed when it came flying home.  Northstar, Tomcat, Inspector Gadget, Shooting Star, Gadget Guru, customers from the bike shop, folks from the bike club.  There are so many here who can lay rightful claim to being a part of the incredible wonder of putting a reusable spacecraft into low earth orbit.

My own attachment is purely emotional.  It is a part of my very personal view of the world, my own internal conviction about the future of the universe.

I remember standing in Nancy Kreplin's back yard, hiders and seekers alike stopped in their tracks, eyes open wide to the sky, watching Sputnik go over. 

I remember being in a red plaid skirt on the cold floor of the school hallway as our third grade class sat out an air raid drill. 

I think back to 7th grade, adjusting the antenna just so, to watch Spock and Scotty, Uhura and Captain Kirk. 

I remember the summer night a few years later when Neil Armstrong left his famous footprint. 

I think of the tears of hope and joy when the shuttle became a fleet and when a woman became an astronaut. 

I remember the wonderours realization that there might actually be a "Starfleet" one day. 

May 26, 2010.  Today.  I tell myself the future, and the sky, aren't going anywhere.  And if it seems for the moment that neither are we, well that's only temporary. 

Tearing up again, sorry.  

Atlantis is heading for the barn.