*
I remember watching with friends late at night on July 20, 1969, the touchdown of the Apollo Lunar Lander Eagle.
The journey from the Earth to the moon’s orbit took the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins three days. After another day orbiting the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin guided the Eagle to the Sea of Tranquility. It took 6 hours and 39 minutes.
Lunar Landers began their journeys from a long distance. They arrived infrequently. Between 1969 and 1972, there were six lunar landings. When they did, it was with a flourish.
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Yesterday was back on the college campus where I taught for 33 years. It’s final exam week. Students were out and about, talking on their phones. From experience, I know many were talking to a parent.
Helicopter parenting, I thought.
A helicopter is always close by.
Hovering.
Lunar Landers are different
Perched above the Saturn V rocket, the Eagle was 238,900 miles from the moon.
When I arrived, it did not hover–and soon departed–rarely returning.
*
My parents were more like Lunar Landers than helicopters. I was raised in the fifties and sixties. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who watched over her three sons from afar.
Without a hint of hovering. Except on yard work Thursdays during the summer.
My father was an engineer whose company, Bendix, helped design the landing gear for the Eagle. My dad, pictured on the left below, worked on the Saturn V fuel systems.
He spent a lot of time in Houston during the 1960s.
On a typical summer day, Would say goodbye to my mom in the morning, mount my bike with baseball mitt hooked over the handlebar, and spend the day playing in a local park with friends. She knew where I was going but I don’t remember her ever asking what I did. Or me telling her.
I asked Barrie, a friend my age, about his childhood parental experiences. He described one experience.
I would leave our west-end home by 5:30 a.m. to serve morning mass at the Kahl Home. My mother was undoubtedly aware of my early morning trek…but it was not until later reminiscing she learned I would often hop on a slow-moving freight train to quicken the trip.
Sometimes, I wanted my mom to hover. There was the day I started a fight with another paperboy who picked his papers up at the same corner. I’m still trying to remember why. I took the first swing, he was tougher than I thought, and I went home with a cut lip. “Paul, you’re just going to have to learn how to handle your own problems,” said my mom when I complained about getting beat-up.
Around the same time, my dad sent me the same message, strangely, in almost identical words. My 6th- grade teacher and I did not get along. Exasperated one day, she pushed me into the cloakroom against a coat hook. I went home with a Band-Aid on my forehead.
This time, the Eagle landed. That evening my non-Catholic, agnostic, and Apollo Space Program father went to talk with Sister Robert Cecil.
Returning an hour or so later, my dad said to me:
Paul, throughout your life, you will meet people you must learn to deal with. Sister Robert Cecile is one of them.
*
There are many routes to successful parenting–helping mold children into adults who take responsibility for their lives.
Adults who no longer need a Lunar Lander or helicopter.
My mom and dad discovered one of those paths.
That’s one tiny benefit to humankind and one giant leap for me.
