January 28, 1986

I drafted this post yesterday but forgot to hit "post". Oops. Anyway...better late than never?

January 28, 1986 was a defining day in my childhood. I remember what I was wearing. It was exactly a week after my 10th birthday, and I was wearing the outfit my mom had gotten me for my birthday - those flowered jeans that were ALL the rage among fourth graders in 1986, along with a yellow shirt and irish cardigan...and of course my LA Gear hightops (a gift from my grandmother for Christmas that year). I don't know exactly why my outfit is so clear in my memory...although I remember precisely what I was wearing on 9/11 too, so maybe it's just a "thing" with me?

Anyway, I remember being really fascinated in the lead up to the "Teacher in Space" - first, because the teacher selected was from nearby (she grew up 10 minutes from my hometown and taught about an hour away), and second because the thought of going into space was, to me, terrifying, even then.

I remember coming back from lunch, and some kids talking in the hall about the shuttle blowing up. I said, "Did they die?" And the boy with the locker across from mine, John said, "Would you die if you were in the space shuttle and it blew up?" "I guess, probably," I said. It just seemed so surreal to me that these astronauts, not to mention Christa McAuliffe, could be dead.

We went into our science teacher's classroom and turned on the TV. And what I remember, really, really vividly, was watching Christa McAuliffe's son keep turning back to look at the sky again and again with a bewildered look, as if he half expected his mom to reappear somehow. To this day, 25 years later, the memory of his face can bring me to tears. He was pretty close to our age then, as I recall, so at the time, I remember relating to him and being unable to imagine losing my mom in any way, let alone in such a surreal one. While watching. And now, as the mother of a little boy, it wrenches me all the more to think of the pain of a little boy losing his mom that way.

I also remember thinking, even at 10 years old, that the TV people should leave that kid alone. It was my first realization of how inappropriately invasive TV news could be. They couldn't even let a little boy have his moment of shock and grieving in peace, and it made me angry. It still does.

That was a really sad day. And for those in my age group, it was a loss of innocence. And we'll never forget that day.