July 20, 1969. I remember watching the lunar landing with rapt attention. It was almost bedtime, but I stayed up, my eyes glued to the black and white images on the screen of the family room TV, still wearing my damp swimsuit from a backyard swim earlier in the evening.
I was 11 years old and a bit of a nerd. I was good at math, an A-student for the most part, still a good little Catholic girl, kind of shy and dorky. Along with the usual cartoons, Leave it To Beaver, I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, I also secretly loved watching Nova, a science program, on PBS. And Star Trek and Lost in Space.
I knew the difference between fiction and science, but seeing those men walking on the moon made all that science fiction stuff a lot less fictional and a lot more real. It seemed like anything was possible. I wanted to be able to go there myself one day. Exploring space like Captain Kirk seemed like something we’d all be experiencing in no time.
In spite of the horrors of the Vietnam War, that whole era of the ’60s and early ’70s seemed so full of promise and expanding horizons. Women were getting jobs and burning bras. The Civil Rights movement had come a long, long way. And now we were planting a flag on the moon!
I made this SoulCollage® card to honor my experience of the lunar landing and the impact it had on me as an 11-year-old as well as the feelings it evokes in me now. I am putting it into my Community Suit, because it represents an actual event within my own experience that had a strong impact on me.
Feeling my way back into that formative era, I have a sense that anything’s possible and the sky’s the limit.
These are the questions this card encourages me to explore:
What is my own new frontier or far horizon? Which things do I choose to do, not because they are easy but because they are hard? What is my own small step that becomes the giant leap? Where do I choose to plant my flag? Will that flag be a symbol of peace or of conquering victory? How do I see my world differently from this new vantage point?
