At Ma's, on the oak dresser she got from Gram and refinished, there
is an upright, two-sided, 5 x 7, wooden picture frame. On the side
facing the room there is displayed a color picture of my brother at
the age of 12. He looks a bit like Alfred E. Newman.
If you go over
and turn the frame around to hide "Alfred," you will see, behind dusty
glass, three 2 x 3
pictures that overlap slightly. They look like black-and-whites,
indistinct light blotches surrounded
by darkness, but, if you look closely,
you will note a blue cast, and just the faintest bit of color. And
then you will also see that the pictures are, top to bottom: Neil
Armstrong standing next to the ladder of the Eagle; "Buzz" Aldrin and
Neil Armstrong and the Eagle; and a split screen of President Nixon on the
phone in the Oval Office, left, talking to our men on the moon who are
standing next to an outstretched American Flag planted
at Tranquility Base, right. I took the
pictures with my Nikon off our TV screen, as I watched, live, the
Apollo 11
Moon Landing of July 20, 1969. (I wish I'd thought to take a
picture of Mike Collins, the pilot who was orbiting the moon in Columbia.)
Two Julys ago I was at the library, on the Internet
computer I had just recently installed,
watching the pictures being transmitted live from the planet Mars by
the Sojourner, the rover on the
Pathfinder Mission.
Lots of cool stuff has happened in my lifetime so far. These marvels
are only the most obvious. I can't wait to find out what's next.
I'm sure the day is not far off that when Ralph
says, "Alice, you're going to the moon," he'll mean it literally.
And maybe I can go, too.