Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

By the dashboard clock, it was supper time. A rising moon kissed the sky. It floated over tail lights and the palm trees, pale and pie-faced. Behind rolled-up windows, only moonlight and radio waves shared the homeward drive. Now came the news of the hour, this just in from space: John Glenn was doing fine. We had almost forgotten; oddly, his blastoff had somehow seemed the end, rather than the beginning, of his moment. John Glenn. Still up there after all this time.

All this time. Actually, it had only been a few days, but time gets away from you here on Earth. Events fly by like cop cars in the fast lane, red bubble lights flashing. You just keep moving as flash yields to flash. On the day the senator from Ohio shot through the stratosphere for the second time in our long national lifetime, so many moving parts were so much in motion that, when the crowd finally dispersed, only impressions remained: The image of a rocket, small and white as a golf ball, soaring. The implacable voice of the countdown, a woman’s voice this time.

After that, there were only the grouches fretting that NASA might be getting away with a media event and the hypesters elevating Glenn to the senior role model of the millennium. Both perspectives felt off. Media events aren’t always

awful; why not a tip o’ the hat to the smart, hard-working people at NASA? And the last time I checked with my in-laws (between their assorted projects and engagements), 77 was too old for role modeling and too young to qualify, at least among grown-ups, as unequivocally “old.”

So the spin moved on, leaving an unspoken subtext, a silent understanding that floated out there, just overhead: In this age of purpose and manipulation, we had catapulted a man into the stars for no real reason, really. Just for the joy. Just for the wonder. Just for the helluvit.

*

Pro or con, no one wants to cop to the whimsy of this mission. On “Meet the Press,” Daniel S. Goldin, the head of NASA, insisted that “America owed” Glenn, not for anything in particular but for the vague reason that he was a “hero” and “a great American.”

Goldin extolled the scientific merit of all that has gone on these last few days on the shuttle Discovery, as if the whole project were solely about facts. If some inner voice wondered why he dared not utter the words, “old times’ sake,” it didn’t reveal itself. He didn’t tell and we didn’t ask.

Goldin’s critics were just as indirect. Their beef, they claimed, was with the cost of the project, never mind that Discovery would have flown with or without Glenn. Or they complained ominously that Glenn got the flight as a favor from the dastardly Clinton administration, as if trips to outer space were the going price of a vote in the Senate these days.

Neither side told the whole truth--which, if it were sayable, might have revealed too much about them, about us. The soaring Godspeed of pure, illogical emotion feels too free, too joyous. The earthbound heart fears it, unable to bear its own weightlessness.

*

In the space of a newscast, darkness fell. They had asked the astronaut about the view beyond his dash. Once his eyes, our eyes, had been the eyes of a younger man, restless and greedy and focused outward. Now the horizon covered not only the place he was headed, but also the place he’d come from, present and past.

Ah, what he had seen: The whole eastern third of the United States, right there, hovering beneath him, all the way to the Great Lakes and Canada. Four thousand miles of Earth passing in a single swath. The Middle East, so small you could scarcely fathom the ages of grief that had beset it. Thunderstorms raking Africa, “600 or 700 lightning flashes” exploding like fireworks below. Whole days passing, sunrise to sunset, in 90-minute clips; hurricanes whirling over the unbelievable, spherical blue. His eyes, our eyes; his face, our face, pressed to the rolled-up window, pale and pie-faced as the inscrutable moon.

Far below, invisible, a speck among specks, we imagined him up there among the satellites and stars. His eyes, our eyes. So many horizons. Who would have guessed that the big picture could be so big, that the world could be so small? Off went the radio. For no reason we could articulate, we opened the sunroof and slipped in a CD. Hendrix. “Purple Haze.” Just for the helluvit. Just for you, John Glenn. Kiss the sky, friend. Godspeed.

Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.