The Astronaut Boards

It may not be too late for me to become an astronaut. I squandered my youth on experience, drink, and other activities unbecoming such a person, but the balance of my life is available, and at the service of the Air and Space Administration, if they will have me.

I will do whatever it takes. I will carry the heavy boxes and clean out the dirty microwave in the astronaut lounge. Weekends, evenings, whatever; twice as many sit-ups as required. A period of humiliating subservience is not optional. I accept that. I am willing to pay my dues.

So I drive over to my mother's place, to break the news. Two white vans are parked in the driveway beside her house. The plain blue lettering on their sides reads: POLK BALLET SUPPLY CO.

Inside, workmen in snappy blue coveralls have torn up the carpet in the den. They are bolting down four-foot square sections of medium density laminated fiberboard while another team, also in coveralls, installs the brackets for the wall-mounted adjustable white-oak barre.

I find my mother in a corner of the kitchen, in a painted wooden chair. She is wearing a turquoise sweatsuit. She is seventy-three years old. A slightly younger woman in a black leotard is fitting my mother for pointe shoes. My mother introduces her as Madame Polk.

On the counter next to the oven, a fresh batch of oatmeal cookies is cooling.

I get myself a cookie and a glass of milk and lean against the counter. My mother is moving her feet around in the shoes. “They seem kind of tight,” she says.

“You will want them to be tight,” says Madame Polk.

There seems to be no way of casually making this announcement. “So,” I say. “I'm thinking of becoming an astronaut…”

“Oh?” my mother says.

Madame Polk looks around at me and smiles. “How wonderful,” she says. She gives me the “thumbs-up” sign. To my mother, she says, “It is so nice to have an astronaut in the family. My sister's husband is an astronaut. Very handy for opening stubborn food jars.”

My mother looks at me, concerned.

“I know what you're thinking,” I say. “The astronaut boards are very tough. The Spatial Relationships portion alone will be a major undertaking, to say nothing of the Boredom Ordeal or the Zero-Gravity Tether section.”

“I'm sure you'll do fine,” she says.

“I'm going to have to do better than fine,” I say. “What about extremely excellent?”

“Are you sure about this?” my mother says. She gives me a serious look. “You wouldn't consider something more—reasonable? For someone your age.”

I stop eating the cookie. I toss the unfinished cookie down the throat of the dispose-all and dump the unfinished milk into the sink. I set the glass down on the counter, hard.

“Your cookies are dry and unpalatable.” I say. “I've always thought so.” And I stalk out of the room.

✣

At the grocery, I load a dozen bags of oranges into my cart. The woman at the checkout gives me a look. I tell her I'm training to become an astronaut.

At the video store, I rent Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I ask the clerk if he knows of any other good astronaut movies.

“What about Star Wars?” he says.

I need to find a good cross-training shoe. An astronaut needs to be versatile.

Should I shave my goatee before taking the astronaut boards? You never see an astronaut with facial hair, but maybe that could be my thing.

A lot of people assume that being an astronaut is all about the glory.

It's not that at all. It's about weightlessness.

✣

My mother stops by to invite me to her first recital. My apartment is strewn with sample tests and scratch paper, empty cans of protein powder, discarded orange peels. My mother is wearing a black leotard, black tights, pink leg warmers. She pushes the orange peels aside with the tip of one black slipper.

“I'm doing a scene from La Sylphide at our recital tonight,” she tells me. She raises her arms for a moment, floats up on her toes and flutters her hands. Even though it is held somewhat in check by the shimmering black fabric, the flesh on the underside of her arms jiggles like jello. “Did you get the invitation I sent you?” she asks. “I'm dancing the part of the sylph.”

“I got the invitation,” I say. I sit down on the bed, take an orange from one of the bags at my feet. I get my fingernails under the skin of it, spiral it off with practiced nonchalance, and bite into it, hard. My mother doesn't seem to notice.

“The part of the sylph is the main part in that ballet. One of the main parts in ballet, period. It's what en pointe was invented for.”

“Will it go very late?” I ask her. I can feel the juice dripping down one side of my chin. “I'm keeping pretty careful hours now, on account of my unreasonable ambition to become an astronaut. I’m taking the test tomorrow morning. Early.”

“It’s my dream,” she says. Bending at the knees, she lowers herself into a grand plié at my feet. “But I need you to see it.”

“Right.” We stand silently for a while.

I take a look around my apartment. The scent of dried up orange peel is losing its charm, and I remind myself that it’s standard Air and Space Administration procedure to close out any unresolved personal business before departing on a long or particularly hazardous mission.

“I'll be there,” I say. “Where is it?”

“It's in the basement of the Town Life Center,” she says. “Conference Room D. Just past the ping-pong tables.”

✣

As a sylph, my mother is somewhat earthbound, trailing wispy pink feathers behind her as she bounds noisily across the tiny plywood stage. I sit beside Madame Polk in the front row. My fingers go numb as I squeeze the metal sides of the wobbly folding chair.

Madame Polk sinks fingernail daggers into my arm. “Quiet,” she hisses. Or is it Quit it? I can't be sure. I realize I've been groaning softly to myself: Oh no, oh no, under my breath.

My mother's courage is touching, but there's no damn way around it. Maybe having your heart in it is just not enough.

The audience applauds politely.

After the show, Madame Polk pushes in front of me with a bouquet of feathery pink azaleas. She calls my mother “Darling” and begins chattering away about how many extra rehearsals they can squeeze in, about what size bus they might need to hire if they were to do a regional tour of ladies' aid societies.

I stand there with my arms crossed tight and my hands balled up at my sides. I want to warn my mother not to spend any more money on ballet lessons, supplies, or equipment, but Madame Polk's brother-in-law is an astronaut, and he could probably make things difficult for me.

I squeeze my mother's shoulder and kiss her cheek. Where I taste—what is that? Sweat or tears?

“How was I?” she asks.

Madame Polk is now thirty feet away from us, on the top rung of a stepladder. She is trickling champagne into a spindly-looking tower of crystal champagne glasses. There is no way that she can hear me. My mind is locked down tighter than a helical flange on a pressurized mating adapter. I am going to wow them on the astronaut boards tomorrow. There is no reason not to tell the truth.

“You were great,” I say.

✣

That night I sleep poorly. I dream of forgetting my pencil, of piloting my shuttle into the sun.

✣

True or False?

It is better to do a difficult thing poorly, than to do an easy thing well.

Each astronaut is unique. There is no such thing as “the average astronaut.”

In October of 1899, Robert H. Goddard fathered modern rocketry. To this day the mother of modern rocketry is not known.

❀

Image by Lupus in Saxonia via Wikimedia Commons.