“She was also planning to conduct two classes from space, including a tour of the spacecraft, called ‘The Ultimate Field Trip’”
It took some time for the meaning of that splitting vapor trail, that spectacular, beautiful cloud, to sink in. Even as we watched it unfold, my daughter and I, she a teacher. There was something so sweet, so anchoring to everyday life that an ordinary teacher was going up. My daughter had entered the competition, way back. I was ill and depressed, that morning. L sat by my bed, on the floor. The launch was excitement itself, and, as I say, the excitement didn’t abate, the high didn’t disperse even as the television told us what our own eyes could see. Something had gone terribly wrong. There is a shot of Christa McAuliffe‘s parents watching the explosion, her mother is shading her eyes with her hand and her expression slowly changes, as the beautiful cloud of the explosion forms over her head and down range. Not to tragedy, everyone was slow to take it in, but from wonder to … puzzlement.
I think my only point is that beauty makes us stupid, for a little while. Here’s that emlematic image. Much later, one could accept, in theory anyway, that those little bits of falling matter to the right were things like, the Challenger‘s wings. The shuttle cabin. I seem to remember reading that the astronauts were said to have died in seconds, and that they were found at the bottom of the ocean, the seven of them still strapped in. That one of them was an ordinary grade-school teacher, well, it broke our hearts. The TV had to say it again and again before one could begin to accept.
That moment! We were living in Hampton, VA, at the time and I was at home alone; the kids must have been in school. I was excited, had been doing my housework within earshot of the TV, waiting for a cue telling me to stop and sit down to see the take-off. An hour afterward, I could have phoned someone, but I knew not to do that to anyone or to myself. There are some truths so unreasoningly horrible, our minds don’t ask us to make them one iota more real just yet. I love that our brains try to take care of us that way…trying to give the living just a little more time–and space.