One Small Step

By: Kathy Sena 

So here we are, headed for the moon once again. If President Bush’s Space Exploration Program falls into place, we’ll see American feet touch the lunar surface by the year 2020. And we’ll watch it live on beyond-high-definition plasma-plus television, or via the high-speed holographic network.

But on the day when a human being first set foot on the moon, I wasn't even one of the millions of people watching Neil Armstrong on TV.

Not that I wasn't old enough to turn on the tube back in July, 1969. I was an 11-year-old kid on a camping trip atop Mingus mountain in Arizona on that cloudless summer night, squished into our truck cab with my parents and my nine-year-old brother. I still had s'mores stuck to my fingers as my brother and I did the noiseless elbow-jabbing and jockeying for space that occupied much of our time on family trips.

"Listen up. Here it is," my dad said, and we fell silent, straining to hear the faint, crackling radio broadcast and staring up at the moon through the bug-smeared windshield as we heard Armstrong tell us he was taking "one giant leap for mankind."

From our mountain-top vantage point -- minus the glaring city lights that surrounded our Phoenix home -- the moon looked closer, brighter than I'd ever seen it. I felt quite ant-like and wondered how someone who puts his pants (OK, maybe his space suit) on one leg at a time just like me could possibly be walking on the moon. I imagined Armstrong's big footprints kicking up moon dust and wondered if he was stirring up a permanent, gravity-free dust storm.

My little brother made dumb jokes about cheese.

We wouldn't see the pictures on TV until we returned home a few days later, but nothing could have topped peering up at the moon as we perched on that mountain, straining to catch every detail from a distant radio signal.

Don't get me wrong on the TV thing. It has its place. In fact, today, I could hold my own in a TV-theme-song sing-off, but when it comes to the things I remember best about being a kid, TV just doesn’t rate.

Things like fishing for bluegill with my dad on a chilly Canadian lake when I was seven. Dad swore -- and even told Mom --  that I saved both our lives because I saw lightening in the distance, allowing him to steer the boat back to shore before a rainstorm hit. (Thanks, Dad, for letting me buy that one for years.)

Things like the hours spent trying to turn our ever-patient Labrador Retriever, Pepper, into a back-yard pony. With a refrigerator shipping box for a stable and a leash for a halter, Pepper cheerfully jumped over sticks in the backyard (i.e., the Olympic-regulation thoroughbred jumping course), allowed herself to be groomed and tried her best to whinny on command.

I don't know that they called it "creating quality time" in the 60’s and 70’s, when parenting was perhaps a bit less well-planned. (My parents didn't have Gymboree, but when we lived in Ohio, Mom did poke holes in mayonnaise jars so my brother and I could catch fireflies and fall asleep in the glow of our own night lights.)

But now that I'm a mom, I know that's what they were doing. Whether it was a glowing mayonnaise jar, an old refrigerator box or a scratchy radio broadcast on top of a mountain, my folks knew it was what my brother and I contributed of ourselves -- imagination, inquisitiveness, sticky fingers -- that made those small, simple moments something I'd remember 30-some years after that moon dust settled.

My grandma used to say television ruined baseball for her. That it was much more entertaining to listen to the colorful radio announcers describing the Sunday-afternoon Cleveland Indians game while she did her weekly ironing. "I could picture every play in my mind," she told me. With television, she complained, the need for imagination -- and for announcers who were true wordsmiths -- went the way of the Edsel. Grandma liked to create her own memories, thank you very much.

My 11-year-old son, Matthew, has been busy making his own memories, too, over the years. It began in preschool with Matthew making monster puppets out of paper bags and putting on a show from behind an old sheet. Stomping around the house, banging on empty oatmeal boxes, belting out "Dinah, Won't You Blow Your Horrrrrn?" And sitting curbside with his best buddies, munching sugar cookies and staring hard at a bend in the road, waiting for the middle-school band to signal the start of our hometown St. Patrick’s Day parade.

One of his best moments so far is captured in a photo on our fridge. Matt, at age 2, and Dad are horsing around on the carpet. In an instant, my camera caught the pure joy on Matthew's face (along with my hubby's backside) as Randy threw his legs up in the air and Matt poked his head between his dad's knees and grinned at me, screeching and giggling.

I'm greedy. I want lots of moments like that for Matthew. And for his dad and me.

It won't be easy. My folks may have had to head to Mingus mountain to fight the lure of TV that night. Randy and I are already working to counter the siren call of GameBoy, Nintendo and all the other electricity-sucking, live-experience-depriving gizmos yet to be created during our son's childhood.

But Matthew, I promise: You'll have plenty of opportunities to save me from a thunderstorm. To drive Charlie the dog crazy in the back yard. And — I hope —  to sit atop a mountain with s'mores on your fingers, staring at the moon.

—      Kathy Sena is a freelance writer and columnist. Visit her Web site at www.kathysena.com.