Space Sticks and Tang

40 years ago today, Apollo 11 launched into space. The Apollo program and gardening are the two areas where my mother and I truly connect. We were living in Houston and I was a toddler at the time of the Apollo program. Everyone in our neighborhood was involved in the space program. Everyone's dad worked for NASA, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman. I remember once sitting on my father's shoulders at a neighborhood block party to welcome home astronauts. I attended Edward White Memorial Elementary School and it was years later that I realized Ed White died on the launch pad of Apollo 1 and why my elementary school had such a long name. My husband and I toured Kennedy Space Center one time and loved it - I got extremely emotional standing on the Apollo 1 launch pad that has never been used. I went back this past December - back to Seabrook, Kemah, Galvaston Bay, Clear Lake City. I took a drive down Saturn Lane and also a drive down memories I didn't realize were so strong. I was pulled strongly towards an internship that would afford the opportunity to do nutrition research at Johnson Space Center. I still find that a jet engine screaming down a runway moves my soul like no other sound. The TV image of liftoff makes me cry everytime. I stayed home the day John Glenn returned to space and jumped up and down screaming during countdown. I was standing in the Louvre when Challenger went down and felt like I had just be punched - hard. I was home when Columbia went down and both my husband and I could not stop crying. As a toddler, I was a space child. That still resonates somewhere in my core.

As a small child I drank Tang and ate Space Sticks. Tang became mainstream. I drank it hot at summer camp and poured the powder down my throat on the starting blocks of swim meets as an age-grouper swimmer. My grandmother made Tang Ice Tea: sometimes when I get extremely lonely, I still crave it. Space Sticks were something else. We LOVED them. I cannot tell you what is in them. But I would spend time at the Shepherds house and all the kids would fight over the last space stick in the box. Today I found them on Amazon (of course I did! Where else would they be?!) And while I am darkly fascinated, terrified, and frankly - disturbed, by a space stick, I may just have to get myself a stick or two and celebrate.

40 years ago today - someone of about my current age, climbed on top of one unimaginably huge rocket and dared to go to the moon. They went with nothing by a slide-rule, bad ice cream, Tang, and a box of space sticks. They went with the dedication and support of the brightest minds on earth. They went with the hope and inspiration of the entire world. Just how cool is that?