Duck and Cover

     It began in the days of duck-and-cover, I'm pretty sure—the preparation for an uncertain future, the foundation of a less certain present. We took our first bold steps into a brave new tomorrow just after World War II. Science fiction became a little more scientific, a little less fictional—in fact, it became life.
     Duck-and-cover—remember?
     That happily animated, idiot turtle telling us what to do in case of atomic attack? (I don't seem to recall that we used the word nuclear— or nookyaler—very much at all back then. Everything was Atomic— restaurants, car dealerships, prom themes. Tommy Rettig even helped to prepare an atomic response to Hans Conried (sets by Dr Seuss)—so, obviously, 'atomic' couldn't be all that bad—or any too scary.)
     And (just maybe because we had invented the stuff) everyone knew that 'atomic' couldn't hurt us Americans. It could kill us, of course— but it couldn't hurt us. Because we had invented it.
     And we were Americans, Einstein and all the rest!
     And still, for some reason, we had the drills. The turtle told us what to do if we heard the alarm. And the turtle told us what to do when we saw the flash.
     If we saw the flash...
      (Fort Lauderdale, then...)
      (Duck-and-cover drills, with a side trip to Hell)
     Of course, bomb shelters were a big part of everything that was happening in those days. There were little afternoon shelters— suitable for whiling away a few hours playing gin with a friend— and huge deluxe shelters, in which one might await either Armageddon or a Messiah, whichever/whoever might ever come first, in regal austerity.
      (Us, the shelters, and why it couldn't work.)
     So.
     Families shopped for shelters. Cuba was becoming a thing, although at first just a little thing—the Missile Crisis hadn't happened yet, and everyone was getting just a little bit nervous— and shelter sales centers were springing up like mushroom clouds.
     So.
     We shopped for shelters. Thing was, we couldn't afford the deluxe underground reinforced bomb shelters, and the little economy fallout jobs my parents could afford couldn't have allowed anything like domestic tranquility for more than 15 minutes, if that. Even just looking at models, stepping in and sitting down on the little fold-out butt-busters, my brother and I screaming 'shotgun' and arguing the point, well—my parents always threatened to leave us outside as soon as the bombs began to fall.
     (I never believed that to be an idle remark, by the way.)
      (Children of the bomb.)
     Anyway. We couldn't afford anything that really seemed "survivable" (in any definition of the word, either inside OR out), so we left the state of Florida altogether.
     And landed in Hell, for which, read Arizona...
     Then, finally wearying of Hell, we moved to California like everyone else.

     We were living in San Jose when humankind landed on the moon. July 20, 1969. And this is actually what I wanted to tell you about in the first place. Do you remember what you were doing? Probably watching television. (That's just a guess. You can get back to me on it if you like—wgs@gte.net)
     Hell, everyone was watching television—the World was watching television—that night. Humankind was going to land—alive— on another world. Things (they said) would never be the same—and of course they weren't. They were, only more so, ever after...
     The moon was new that night; well, just past, actually. Between new and first quarter. It had a good leading edge to it. And in the early evening sky, you could see it the way you see a dime at the bottom of a wishing well—you know what you're looking at, you can see it, but you can't see the face of it. This last is assuming that it's a Roosevelt dime, and heads-up; you could still get the Standing Liberties in change from time to time, back then. (Please note that I am a product of the Television Generation—the face in the moon that could not be made out that night was Ralph Kramden's...) Only part of the moon was bright green cheese— the rest was a faintly luminous toll house cookie.
     I've never known why NASA's PR people hadn't insisted on a full moon—something more spectacular, more fitting of the occasion. On the other hand, without getting into all the technical reasons that I have no doubt exist, despite my ignorance thereof, I have come to accept the moon that night as symbolically suited and of appropriate moment, being a moon—if you will—of promise and new beginnings.
     And this moon left the full moon uncluttered for lovers, who have no need to think of such things, in each other's arms in meadows or Buicks along the back roads of the country...
     The world, as I said, was watching television.
     But not my father.
     While we all gathered around the tv set, he got a can of beer from the pantry (preferring it warm), and stepped outside.
     At 7:56 p.m., while we were all staring at the black-and-white, he was outside in a lounge chair, staring up.
     At the moon.
     The moment—I'm sorry, let me try that again. The Moment came. And the Moment went. And while we were asking, "WHAT did he say? One small—huh?", Dad came in from the yard. With tears in his eyes.
     What's wrong, we asked; where were you, we asked. He told us he was fine.
     And he told us where he'd been.
     "I saw it. I watched the moon."
     You watched the moon, we said; what the hell did you see watching the moon?
     "I watched the moon. And whatever was happening on the moon while I watched, that is in my eyes. Light from whatever it was—it touched my eyes." And he smiled, and wept a little more.
     Some of us shivered.
     And some of us laughed, and said, oh, sure, though not really so sure, ourselves.
     But I know this now—that my father was right. The footage of Armstrong was re-played more times during the next week than commercials—Dad got to see what we all saw. It wasn't real-time, but we didn't say real-time back then.
     But none of us was ever touched by the true light of the moon that night, the light of the moment, the light of things that he could not see, but saw, while we watched the thing that he had chosen not watch so that he could SEE.

The years have rolled past since that night like television credits after 1973—too fast to read, even if you know what you're looking for, even if it's your own name.
Today, science fiction has become even more intimately woven into the fabric of things, the warp and the woof of our way(s) of life:

     'Laser' isn't acronymized anymore;
     AIDS stalks us all;
     We actually need a term like 'designer drugs';
     Brontosaurus has a new name, and one with way less mass appeal
     (let's all of us agree never to say it again, ok, please?);
     The god Video is worshiped in more ways that Vishnu, and more
     often than any One...

     And. My father has become old, and not robustly so.
     My father has a thing, they say—a thing at the base of his brain that the doctors will not—or cannot—diagnose, but describe only, and this in terms of symptoms and not prognosis.
     "Dysfunctional idiopathy." Right... Thanks.
     One or two have even resurrected the term/word "dementia", as in "possible dementia of uncertain origin".
     They adjust his medication, trying to get it right. More science fiction, I suppose: a darker kind, of technologies as yet unmastered. And my father is fine for the most part, more troubled by his failing hearing than anything else.
     So—we know that he has a thing at the base of his brain. But we can't see it, we have no real evidence of it, we have only the word of doctors who fail at both diagnosis and cure.
     What we can see is in his eyes. The light of that moon on that night, it lingers there—the light that Armstrong kicked through space to touch my father, who did not duck and did not cover.
     Kennedy is dead and Camelot has been turned into a corner-mall, but my father's eyes—they shine. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
     They shine.