J. Kenner Writes…About Getting Out Of Your Own Way & Astronauts

Today, I want to tell you a fable about getting out of your own way.

First, a bit about our main character: me.

I’ve always been shy, more so when I was younger. I was only comfortable one-on-one with a friend or in small groups, ideally of people I know very well. Presentations never bothered me—I could get up on a stage and give a talk, but stick me in a party where I had to conjure words and be entertaining and thoughtful and not say something utterly stupid, and I would happily melt into the wall.

That’s still the case. I go to a lot of writing conferences, and I’m the girl clutching her glass of wine and looking desperately around for someone I know who won’t disown me if I latch onto them. I’m better now, true, and I’ve worked hard to be better. But that doesn’t mean that the butterflies aren’t still there. I assure you, they are. En masse.

And calling a stranger? That’s hard stuff. And one of the reasons that the Internet is my friend. Book research without having to schedule face to face or phone interviews? Yes, please!

So that’s my personality. Now, let’s move on to our fable’s backstory.

My father grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and he went to school with Alan Bean (high school, I believe, although it may have been elementary and middle school, too).

If you don’t know who Alan Bean is, well, you should. He was an Apollo 12 crew member and the fourth man to walk on the moon. Here’s his Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bean)

After he retired from NASA, he was still involved with the moon through his art. He painted absolutely stunning lunar landscapes (you can see some at www.AlanBean.com).

My father also worked at NASA for while. He always wanted to be a pilot, and tried to do so through the Navy, but his eyesight was such that he couldn’t fly jets. He ended up being a private pilot. In fact, after my parents divorced, instead of being shuttled every summer by car between his Dallas home and my home with my mom in Austin, my dad would pick me up in his single engine Bonanza (and later his twin engine Cessna). Both of which I even “flew” on occasion. As in, I held the wheel and kept the plane level. Landing, alas, was out. As it should be for a ten-year-old.

My dad’s tenure at NASA was before I was born. He worked in the Mountainview, California facility as an aeronautical engineer, and up to the time of his death, I was told that many satellites that he helped design were still in orbit. He’d left NASA for the private sector by the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and though I was very young, I can remember sitting on his lap to watch that historic event on television. And to this day I still have a packet from NASA that includes photos of many astronauts, some technical specs, and maps of the moon. When I was younger, I thought this was some sort of confidential information that my dad sneaked out when he left. Later, of course, I realized that it was essentially a take-away for contractors and whatnot who interacted with his division at NASA. Either way, it was cool, and it’s in a bucket of lifetime memorabilia I won’t ever part with (along with all my original Star Wars bubble gum cards, among other things).

So space stuff and astronaut stuff and flying stuff was a part of the zeitgeist of my youth. My paternal grandmother, Ebby, even used to tell me that I’d been babysat and had my diaper changed by an astronaut (who, when I later pressed her, she told me was Alan Bean).

I loved that story. I mean, who among us has had our diaper changed by an astronaut … who isn’t actually related to said astronaut?

(I later asked my dad about the babysitting/diaper thing, and that was when I learned that apparently I got my storytelling skill from Ebby. Yes, the connection to Alan Bean and my family was real. And, yes, my dad and he still kept somewhat in touch. But Alan Bean worked in Houston, and during the time I was wearing diapers, I was up in Mountainview. According to my dad, although he’d seen Bean since my birth, he didn’t think that I’d ever met the man. Still, it makes a damn good story.)

After the movie Apollo 13, Tom Hanks co-produced a wonderful documentary called From the Earth to the Moon, which I eagerly gobbled up. I was particularly interested in the episode where Bean walks on the moon, as well as the story about how he left his silver pin on the moon’s surface. The pin signified an astronaut who had completed his training but hadn’t yet walked on the moon.