The Moon and Me
Why it mattered then. And now.
It was my mum who decided we should all go out into the garden and look at the moon. My dad and I dutifully followed. It shone bright and full in the late evening of a suburban sky. The Sea of Tranquility was easy to spot, and I knew exactly where the landing site was, as the entire mission had been mapped out on my bedroom wall for some weeks. “Can you actually believe it? There’s people up there. On the moon. People,” said my mum with all the sense of wonder that the moment demanded.
To this day I have never forgotten that sense of wonder and astonishment we all felt that evening. And I wanted the Russians to win! Pictures of astronauts, cosmonauts, space craft and planets covered my bedroom walls. There was a special place for Valentina Tereshkova, to this day the first and youngest woman to go into space — and the only woman ever to fly a solo mission. And the only cosmonaut I ever actually saw. We were both wearing swimming costumes at the time.
“You’ll never forget tonight as long as you live,” added my dad. “You’ve seen some wonderful things in your childhood”. He was right on both counts. My childhood was my wonder years — the sixties: The Beatles, the Moon, England 1966. His own childhood, and that of my mother, was somewhat less full of wonder. When they were both a year younger than I was that evening, they spent night after night in bomb shelters as the nazis pummeled their city.
I wasn’t conscious then, but that evening was the beginning of the end of my childhood. I’d become a teenager a month earlier, and as 1969 turned into 1970, cosmonaut heroes left my bedroom walls to be replaced by Led Zeppelin, The Nice and various pretty things. Other changes were happening — some involving very ugly things.
The week of the moon landing The Beatles had two singles in the chart. Within a month they had ceased to be. That dream was over. Something else happened within a month too. In Northern Ireland they began burning down homes where Catholics lived. In a small contested corner of the British Isles events began, the consequences of which we are still grappling with today.
But that night in the garden I had no idea what the future would bring. I had only a sense of complete wonder and the realization that we are capable collectively of solving whatever problem we choose — if we have the will to do so. And that realization has never since been occluded by cynicism or despair. We choose to do what we do, not because those things are easy, or difficult — but because we have a collective will to do them.
The legacy of Apollo 11 for me is the hope in collective endeavor. The hope that working together we truly can aim for the stars in all that we do. If we want to. If there’s a will. That’s is what I saw that night in the garden gazing at the moon. And when things feel a bit grim, when Hope feels Trumped, I go out and look at the moon. Yes we can.
