For Safekeeping

Roger Chaffee was one of the original Apollo astronauts, but he was brought in later, not part of that first macho group, so many of the comments about him later from his colleagues were along the lines of, “Well, I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed like a nice guy …” He had had no time in space when he was chosen for the first Apollo mission, and that brought a lot of grumbling -mainly from the PR machine surrounding the space program. Astronauts were not just pilots and engineers and geologists in training – but they were also celebrities, expected to make public appearances, and make NASA look good. There is one amusing (and yet awkward) scene in From the Earth to the Moon when Roger Chaffee is sent out to what looks like an Elks Club meeting, and he is their keynote speaker, and everyone present is like, “Who the hell is THAT? Has he ever been in space?” But Chaffee rolls with that punch, doesn’t seem to take it personally, and does his best to promote NASA and the Apollo missions – he has the sense that what he is involved in is bigger than himself. Later, after Chaffee was killed, Frank Borman testified before Congress in the hearings investigating what went wrong. And Borman, like most of the other astronauts, prefaces his remarks with, “Roger Chaffee was new … I didn’t know him all that well …” But the one anecdote he shares is eloquent, not just about Chaffee the man, but about the type of man involved in the space program. There was a meet-and-greet at an air force base, with the top brass and the press and all the bigwigs – but there were also a bunch of mechanics sitting in the back, the men responsible for actually building the machines that were going to to go to the moon. And Roger Chaffee went up to this group to thank them personally, to take time to chat with them, man to man, mechanic to mechanic, about what they all were working on. Borman says, “And Chaffee made them feel like they were the most important part of the space program.”

The episode involving the fire on Apollo One that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee is one of the most wrenching of the entire mini-series. It was a horrible thing. Horrible for the men in that command module, of course, but also horrible for their families, not to mention the space program itself. It nearly derailed the whole thing.

The second half of the episode deals with the fallout, the Congressional hearings, and the palpable feeling you get that these men were ALL making it up as they go along. In my opinion, this is David Andrews’ finest hour in the entire mini-series, and he has many superb moments – but he is called in to testify before Congress, provide context, and he is beyond good. I watched it hunched over, holding my breath.

These have been dark dark times for me, and very often I do not know which end is up. My reading is nonexistent, I can no longer write (at least not the writing that I need to do), and I have no sense of time. I drift. I am thankful, in a way, that I am a very rigid personality, because there is something in me, something internal, that keeps me on track. I have no one else to help me, I have no backup. But I make my appointments, I meet my deadlines, and I trudge forward. With zero joy. But I trudge forward. There is much to be thankful for. My sister is having a baby in two months. Cashel climbed a rock wall a couple times and is going to Astro Camp this summer and is very excited. He is also working hard at his cello practice. He is having breakthroughs left and right in how he deals with the world. My other sister has just come out with her second album, which makes me want to cry every time I hear it, and is flourishing with her wonderful new boyfriend, whom I now think of as a member of our family. Lovely man. My brother is writing and composing and trying to stay healthy, not to mention stay on top of being a father and a good partner to Melody. And my mother. What can I say. She looks around at the world and does her best to see the good in it. Always. I don’t know anyone like her.

I have a lot happening right now, obviously. What I share on the blog is what I choose to share (something that is lost on many, who think that my blog is my whole life.) Most of my life is off the blog. It has always been that way.

I don’t write for those who don’t get it and I don’t defend myself. I see no need, and I dislike my writing when it gets defensive. What has happened to me, through Skyward, is that I have remembered – and cherished – who I was on this planet before things started shifting, before time changed, shrunk. It was a moment in my life when I was still a little girl, but starting to cherish hopes that I kept secret from my parents. I was young enough to have no concept beyond my own innocence. All I had were inchoate dreams and yearnings. I have often asserted that this is the best part of us. And when we lose that part, or snicker at it, or talk down to it- we lose our humanity. The price is too high to pay.

This is how I operate. This is how I have always operated. I suppose it is the fantasist in me, the person who dislikes reality and would like to join a dreamspace pronto – and for good … so yes, there is a part of all of this that acts as an Ejector Seat for me. But, as always, there is more to it than that. What a passion like this does is that it helps me – in the darkest bleakest of moments – to stay in touch with that that is still juicy, still alive, still hopeful … the part of me that helps me keep going.

I have written before that, over the history of my life, I have had these “obsessions” repeatedly. They burn out like a fever. But they usually appear when I need them the most. It has to do with what Dr. Wilbur, in Sybil, says to Sybil when she plays her tapes of the altnernate personalities – playing Mozart, etc. “That’s Vanessa …” she says … “and she has all your music for safekeeping.” In 2002, I could not focus on my own life, because I was too far gone, I could not say to myself, as my own parent or doctor, “Oh … I will need this for safekeeping … DON’T LOSE THIS” because my mindset was too bad. If you have never been there, you could not understand. I could not turn my attention at all to what I had lost or what I wanted to keep, because, frankly, I was manic and suicidal for four months. It is a feeling I never … ever … wish to experience again. It was a maelstrom in the mind. All I could do was maintain my index card project and watch Moulin Rouge. Over … and over … and over … and over …

It is only now that I am out of that dreadful time that I can see that my subconscious, my soul, was putting things away “for safekeeping”. That without Moulin Rouge, I would have been lost for good. Now, yes, there were practical things that happened that helped me eventually too – doctors and drugs and care from the medical profession … but I had already started on that path. My soul reached out into the darkness and grasped onto Moulin Rouge and clung to it like a life raft.

To this day, I have a hard time seeing that movie.

It served its purpose.

After the big brou-haha with Oliver this past week, balking at my posts on the “poster boy”, I got a comment that only served to show me that some people will never get the point of what I am doing here. (Or what, in general, a blog is. But that’s another issue.) This gentleman, obviously thinking he was being supportive, wrote, “Please more posts like this – less ‘gravitas’ and more Square Pegs please!” He then left a little smiley emoticon. This person, just like Oliver, has missed the point, and his comment is just as ridiculous as the one left by the person who is affronted by my LACK of “seriousness”.

Gravitas has its place here, just as does frivolity. I actually don’t find “frivolity” to be a silly concept at all, or “light” – I find it to be one of our precious gifts as humans. An ability to be frivolous means we are still alive, and oh God, what dreadful bores are those humans with no sense or appreciation of frivolity. When I write a post such as this one, the person I have in mind as my Ideal Reader (because that’s the only person I write to) … reads, and takes it in, and not just thinks about what I have said, but thinks about their own lives … their own journeys … the things they want to hide away for safekeeping, and how they manage to do that. By cooking, or sewing, or pushing their kid on the swingset.

I am going where I, personally, need to go right now, and I am trying … desperately … through my writing … to put things away for safekeeping. I can’t lose anymore. I can’t afford it.

As always, it is not an accident. It is not an accident that Glenn from Texas would have Googled Suzy Gilstrap of all things, in mid-December, just in time to see my post on that fine lady. It is not an accident that he taped those two silly television movies, and still has copies … and was willing to send them on to me. It is not an accident that this obsession (I prefer to call it a “project”) has come into my life at this particular time. I can feel that things are being stored away … safely … so that I can find them again if I should want them.

None of this has been an accident.