“It’s…” She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
“What is?”
She laughed and shook her head again. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but this was awfully close. I needed to find out more about her. She looked close to my age, long black hair, and that infectious smile would haunt me forever.
She held up a finger to say, “Hold on a second,” and texted back to her NASA contact. Totally thrilled!
At that second, Karen knew she was going to the moon.
After she sent the text, she looked up to me as if noticing me for the first time.
“Sometimes everything seems to just work out,” she said.
“Well that sounds like something worth celebrating!”
Later, I told her she’d misunderstood my comment. I meant that she should go celebrate with her friends. She thought I was suggesting the two of us celebrate together.
Best misunderstanding of all time.
“We can grab a table here if you want,” she said.
I have no idea why she agreed to that. It was totally out of character for her to sit with a stranger to have a coffee. Maybe the adrenaline rush of the news, or maybe it was God’s will, if you believe in that kind of thing. Whatever the case, she didn’t question it, and so I didn’t either.
“Sure, I’d like that. My name is David. David Abelman.”
“Karen Anderson.”
She didn’t tell me about the moon trip until we’d been dating for two weeks. Up until then, she said it felt like it was all a dream that could be yanked out from under her at any time.
Memories were made from shared lives.
I need to interrupt myself right now before we continue. The thing is, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. If you were a close friend or somebody else who I’d known my whole life, I wouldn’t need to stop here, but I have no idea who might read my story at some point (and it’s certainly possible it’s nobody at all, in which case this is a little pointless).
My grandmother was Jewish. So was my mother. And in theory, so am I.
In theory? Yes, because I was raised in a Jewish household, learned the various customs and traditions, was taught about Hanukkah and all about lighting the menorah instead of Christmas, observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the rest, and for many years I was dragged to the local synagogue to listen to Rabbi Pfeiffer tell us all about the things we should know.
Typical Jewish kid, with one difference. None of it stuck.
In all the years I was supposed to be studying Hebrew or learning the Torah, none of it called to me, not even a little bit. Something inside me rebelled at every chance, daydreaming for Rabbi Pfeiffer or yawning by the time the third candle was lit in the winter. All my grandmother’s teachings fell away, shed like rainwater when the sun came out.
What was the sunshine?
Science. That is the religion that called to me. I learned at a young age that the universe was created in the Big Bang about 15.8 billion years ago. There was no creator necessary, just the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity.
My gods were people like Albert Einstein and Niles Bohr, Edwin Schrodinger and Max Planck, Paul Dirak and Werner Heisenberg, and their lessons stuck to me like glue.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam… I always knew they were all pointless attempts to explain things, but I also knew that real explanations came from understanding the laws of physics.
From the time I was ten, science was my yellow brick road, and taking photographs of science was my life’s goal.
As I’m typing this, I know how foolish this all sounds, so humor me for now. Trust me when I say that my beliefs were as ingrained into me as the Ten Commandments were into Moses.
That doesn’t mean my behaviour was forgivable or even understandable, but I hope it does help you to at least appreciate a little bit of how things unfolded.
I was certainly not immune to being pig-headed, and a bigot on top of that.
I touched Karen’s hair and that woke her from her slumber.
“Hi there, sleepy-head,” I said.
She smiled.
A rush of excitement fell through me. It hit me again that I was waking up with Karen, the girl I’d missed so much the past six months. I could feel her skin beneath my fingers and smell her familiar scent. I held her close and wanted to stay that way forever.
“David?”
“Hmm…?”
“You know it’s not long before I start more serious training. I’ll have to be in Houston for that.”
I’d forgotten that, even the me experiencing this for the first time had forgotten. I knew it, of course, but I’d pushed the details to a far corner of my mind, hoping they’d trickle away.
“When?”
“I should be there by the end of July at the latest. So, a couple of weeks… I’ll need to get settled and everything. NASA will help me find an apartment, but I want to get to know the routine and meet the other trainees.”
“I’ll visit as often as I can. I’ve always liked Houston.”
How often would that be? I didn’t know. I did know Houston wasn’t my choice of place to live. Grandma lived near me in Minneapolis, and it was hard to imagine moving elsewhere.
Grandma.
The thought of her living not far from here made me miss her terribly. I could go see her right then. But, of course I was exactly where I wanted to be.
“I want you to pray for me while I’m gone.”
I stared at her. “You know I don’t believe in praying. It’s just hocus pocus.”
“You once told me a story about Niels Bohr. He’s one of your heroes, right?”
I didn’t answer. I knew what she was going to say.
“I probably won’t get this right, but a visitor came to his house and was surprised that he had a horseshoe hung above his door. The visitor said, ‘I thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that.’”
I finished the anecdote for her. “And Bohr answered, ‘I’m told it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.’”
Karen smiled, and my heart ached.
“So, I need you to pray, whether you believe in it or not. It’s for me, not for you.”
I leaned back, and she surely knew I wasn’t happy. Grandma had long ago stopped trying to convince me of the power of prayer. She knew better. So did Karen.
“I’m going to find a church in Houston,” she said. “I’m going to be making connections within that church, and I’m going to pray and read my Bible every day. I need that security. Otherwise I won’t have the courage to do this.”
“You’re a scientist.”
“Yes.”
“How can you believe in that crap?”
Karen had a Ph.D. in molecular genetics. She was the author of a dozen papers that detailed how evolution had worked its magic on humanity. When aliens were discovered on the far side of the moon, NASA reached out to the top biologists in the country to look for volunteers to join the program. Karen sent in her resume, expecting to be rejected along with a hundred other applicants.
She told me she’d never really thought about actually flying to the moon. That was crazy talk. Until it wasn’t.
“You know what I believe,” she said. “I’ve never hidden that from you.”
“But, it’s different now. Everything is different.”
“No, nothing has changed.”
“There are fucking aliens on the moon! Did your God make them? Doesn’t the Bible say that Earth was created by God for his creations? Did He lie?”
“I don’t pretend to know all the answers, David. You shouldn’t either. We’ve been through this before. I just know what I believe.”