Sweat/No Sweat

I’ve been doing a daily nighttime diary for 14 days for Carnegie Mellon University: “Help Us Learn about the Impact of the Coronavirus on Individuals, Couples, and Families.” It asks me what Covid-19 measures I do, what activities I’ve done during the day, and whom I’ve interacted with and for how long. Then it asks how I’m feeling, both emotionally and physically. I recommend the study.

Most days, the only person I’ve seen in 24 hours is Tim, and most days – especially bad weather ones – we’re in our house for a lot of the day. That’s usual for me, but Tim has always been a coffeehouse or daily athletic club, get-out-of-the-house kind of guy. That’s not possible now. Our house is our only inside place. Our only inside place.

Usually, we inhabit the house very nicely together. This surprised me, but I’d had to adapt to his invasion presence when he retired, so this was old business. I go downstairs, he stays upstairs. I am so grateful for this space!

But with Covid-19, how Tim and I occupy the house is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

It started with his little 8-minute workout routine. I’d hear his phone beeping and he’d start jumping or sitting up or hopping or stopping. It was so cute! I offered assistance: “Why don’t you use the old ensolite pad I still have? Oh, what about those weights I got for exercises when both my legs were broken (and haven’t used since)?” 

Little by little, those eight minutes grew. Tim rediscovered the monkey bars on the ceiling in Sophie’s old room – which has been My Precious Space for years – and he’s added pull-ups to his workout. He comes in while I’m writing on the computer and he grunts and lifts and sweats right behind me.

He moves from room to room on his now-hour-long circuit. Hopping things seem to happen in his office, but stretching things seem to happen in the living room. I’m not sure where he does the giant blue ball things. Or the lunging things. (I’m downstairs and just hear thumps.) And now, there’s The Box.

I only exercise outdoors, period. Indoors, I may interrupt inactivity to do things, but the general backdrop is inertia. For me, Covid-19 means there is no consequence to laziness; if I don’t know what day it is, everything can happen tomorrow. Tim does Covid-19 strenuously and in motion. Outdoors and indoors. He just finished building The Box.

I love boxes. I love a good, clean box with a snug-fitting lid. A box just the right size for whatever contents. I am a Box Person. Boxes hold things.

Tim’s box is empty. It’s 18 inches square, wooden, beautifully crafted, and empty. He jumps onto it. Yes, he stands in front of it and jumps up vertically and lands on the box. Apparently, according to YouTube, it’s a Thing.

I stood in front of the box. Nothing happened.

I don’t even know what muscles to tell to move to make me jump up vertically like that.

Now, if you can see where this is going, it’s obviously about more than a box. I have to adapt to living with someone who is doing Covid-19 very differently from me. In the same house as me. I can’t just tell him to stop jumping and sweating and hopping and sweating and lunging AND SWEATING all over the house.

Omigod, what happens when it’s winter and the windows are closed?!?

I have to appreciate that Tim’s taking care of his health and wellbeing in the best way. (The Carnegie Mellon researchers would be very impressed.) I have to appreciate that he just purchased a giant floor mat so his sweat won’t land on the carpet. Finally, I have to appreciate that just because I am a slug, I do not have any moral authority to begrudge the non-slug in my midst (especially when the non-slug doesn’t complain about my craft supplies invading the common space). We share this Covid-19 interior space, and I    have    to    adapt.

Uh, oh. This might be harder than jumping onto that box.

Einstein was right.

Einstein was right. Covid-19 proves it.

In his theory of special relativity, he looked at “space-time.” That’s where the three dimensions of space are linked with the dimension of time in the space-time continuum. So, we don’t just live in a place and we don’t just live in a certain time; we occupy “space-time.” Then, in his theory of general relativity, he realized that gravity could cause distortion in space-time, that it would warp space-time. Think of it as the weight of something pressing down like a marble on a blanket of space-time.

I study Time. I read physics books about it, science fiction about it, watch movies about it. But on some level, it’s non-intuitive. You just can’t wrap your head around it.

Until Covid-19.

My days used to begin, proceed, and end in a very linear path. (That’s called the Arrow of Time.) I woke up, did things, and ultimately went to bed. Many times, with my always-disrupted sleep cycle, things re-started somewhere around 11 p.m., but they still moved. Linearly. One minute after another.

Until Covid-19.

I still wake up (thank goodness!), and I still walk downstairs to my computer. Somewhere around the ninth or tenth news story – or maybe it’s the fourth or fifth review of the peak Covid-19 projections by state or the map of cases around the world or does the size of the dose of the virus make a difference and what about serum antibodies – time starts to leak. Or warp.

For a while, when I was researching the best prototype of face mask to sew – elastic or fabric ties or T-shirt ropes? with or without a pocket for a filter? pleated or form-fitting? – time actually disrupted. Ruptured, the physicists call it, and it’s what a black hole does.

When two black holes collide, they send gravitational waves rippling through space-time. I think the black hole of Covid-19 news updates collides with the black hole of Facebook and distorts my space-time. You probably know this scientific phenomenon as a “time sink.”

Because next thing I know, when I go upstairs – when I move my gravity-weighted body upstairs – it’s like a whole different day. I’m not quite sure where the day went.

Because I’ve bent space-time.

So maybe I’ll do something noteworthy, like go skiing. That used to be one thing in a day of many things. Now, I’ll come back from skiing, take a shower, and the whole day is gone!

That’s what happens when there’s an actual event – skiing. Many days, I’ll come upstairs and … the whole day disappears! I have so warped time that it just … folded in on itself. I am living in a Star Trek wormhole.

I’ve tried looking at the clock to see if it’s still moving at a regular pace (which is sort of pointless because Einstein said it was all relative anyway), but when I look away; whole hours pass.

In fact, some days Thursday happens before I’ve ever had Tuesday and Wednesday!

I’ve been narrowing it down a little. If I have a Zoom conversation at 10 a.m., Time holds steady for a while: Zoom keeps track and does a 40-minute countdown. But around 11 a.m., it suddenly becomes 3 p.m. The wormhole must be in there somewhere.

There’s external evidence, too. Before Covid-19, we ran the dishwasher maybe once a week. Now, we eat the same number of meals – even re-use mugs and dishes – and the dishwasher needs running every other day. Having soup each night just adds a few soup bowls; that shouldn’t explain it. Time is warping.

Passover was eight days. I don’t think so. I’ve never finished eight days with leftover chocolate macaroons, but there they are. I even loaded up and had three yesterday. (Was that yesterday?)

I can induce a total time warp. I can actually cause a black hole collision and a total rupture of time by simply pulling out a jigsaw puzzle. Time stops for jigsaw puzzles … but then it suddenly accelerates when you look up at the clock.

I wonder if Einstein did jigsaw puzzles.

Invasion of "the Other"

My husband has retired.

[Pause for those of you who’ve already experienced this and are either cringing or just waiting to hear what I write next.]

It’s an adjustment. First came panic, then came hostility, now there’s … contentment.

The panic had to do with my space. I have my own office/studio, but pretty much, the Whole House has been mine for the last few years. He left in the morning and came back in the evening. I wasn’t observed.

For the first days after he retired, he didn’t just observe, he hovered. That must have been when the hostility surfaced. He thought I was going to be available, and I had my own agenda, I owned my own days. [Look at all these words in bold! These are strong feelings.]

According to quantum theory, observation of something changes that something; and I know that’s actually happening: his observation of me is acting on me, changing me. I can get really existentialist about all this and quote my own philosophy thesis on Sartre’s horror of objectification by “the Other.” My “Other” is looking at me.

Whoa, I just now realized how my two main areas of intellectual interest actually overlap!

Anyhow, we got that straightened out. He mostly leaves the house in the morning, and I can share the house by going somewhere else in it. Thank heavens for rooms, multiple rooms. (Although he has observed that while he keeps all his personal items in his office, my personal items manage to migrate to every single common space in the house.)

When my mother first visited us and met Tim, she was enthralled. She and I were sitting at the dining room table, and Tim was wandering around the house, looking up and around. He was looking for light bulbs that might need changing. My mother oohed, “Oh, he’s handy! He’s looking for projects!”

Right now, as I write this, Tim is trekking the lawn, looking for dandelions that need pulling. Tim relaxes by doing things.

I relax by doing nothing.

I know what you’re thinking: she’s not doing nothing, she’s writing. Well, I only interrupted my doing nothing because I needed to tell you about doing nothing. I’ll go back to doing nothing.

I’ve always had issues with productivity and categorizing myself as lazy. Mostly, I try to consider a day productive if I’ve done two things. It used to be three things, but in the summer, I reduce my requirement to two. I count lying on our deck as the extra because I’m outside and not on the couch.

Yesterday, I picked up a paint chip to see if the color would work for our front door. That counted as one productive effort, so I lost momentum because I was also doing laundry; my productivity quotient was met. I thought today I might wash the door, but since I’m writing this, my door-momentum has faded. Besides, I also returned a book to the library when I was picking up the paint chip.

I am married to a man who will get the paint chip, wash the door, paint the door, clean up afterwards, and count all that as one productive effort. And he would have finished it by now – in one day! – except that I claimed the door as MY (eventual) productive effort. But with one mumbled comment, it’s clear he has observed my inactivity, thus proving Sartre’s – and my – horror of “the Other.” I am seen doing nothing! It doesn’t help that I am also forced to observe his activity.

Fortunately, “the Other” has other benefits, such as companionship. Today’s second productive effort will be going on an outing with him. I adapt.

You can go home again.

Yes, it is possible to go home again. It’s just littler.

I remember the first winter break I came home from college. I’d left my dormitory shower room, with its wall of sinks and room of showers and came home to my parents’ house … with its single, tiny, little sink and shower. The counter seemed made for midgets as I had to stoop over to brush my teeth. Were college counters higher because there were no children there? The whole return home experience seemed like a voyage to Lilliput.

In our last visit to New York, my sister Elizabeth and I decided to explore New Jersey. I lived there from age four to eight, and she was born there. We actually drove up to our old address. We had not been back there since 1962. 56 years.

Yet I knew the curve in the street! I knew where my friend Karen used to live! I knew this place!

Except that almost all the houses had sprouted second floors or additions. They were bigger, swollen over their lots. But not ours. Ours was the little ranch house I remembered. From the outside.

The current owner, Jen, let us in.

How could a family of six have lived in that house? Where did we eat? In the itsy-bitsy kitchen?? I do remember we couldn’t open cabinets or the refrigerator when we were all seated at supper, but how did we even walk through the kitchen? How did my mother cook in there? Did we ever have relatives over for Thanksgiving or Passover? There was no way a single other person could have sat at our kitchen table.

How did we ever fit? The dining room was our living room. That’s where the couch, TV, and Dad’s chair was. How did it all fit??? Even Jen couldn’t imagine it. I’m pretty sure I watched TV from the floor.

No wonder our main play area was outside or in the basement.

The full basement was acres and acres of interesting stuff to play with. My father’s workshop, my mother’s laundry area (with her ironing mangle!), the place where old interests died (the fish tank, for example), and my own personal area: under the stairs, with my father’s old electronics (an oscilloscope!). The basement was our domain.

If you asked me, I’d say we had to go down twenty steps to get way, way down to the basement.

At Jen’s house, there were seven steps.

I can still describe the bookshelves with the Golden Book Encyclopedias in the living room, the pink cement patio we used to chalk whole cities on (which is still there, under Jen’s deck), the Book of Knowledge bookcase behind the couch, my mother’s philodendrons climbing to the ceiling and serving as a room divider. I can close my eyes and remember Home.

So I sat on my couch, in my Anchorage living room, and looked around. I looked at the bookshelf full of books and the other full of games. At the pottery from Mexico, the painting from a silent auction, the flea market couch that’s been reupholstered twice. The lamps that fall over, the beanbag chairs and pillows I made years ago, the ivy that climbs up the fireplace wall. The three different colors I picked for the walls.

“Guess what I’m thinking,” I said to Tim.

“That our home is homey,” he said.

How did he know that? That was exactly what I was thinking.

It must have been the smile on my face.

Our Expanding Universe

I get it! I understand! I had to reach my Third Third, but I finally have the answer. So, what’s the question?

It’s about the Big Bang and how our universe is continuing to expand. I get that. (Stay with me; it’s more than a metaphor.) But when I was in New York City, I blogged about this problem I had:

In the Hayden Planetarium show “Dark Universe,” Neil deGrasse Tyson (one of my heroes), said that when things move away from us, their light waves “redshift” [as if we’re seeing tail lights], that from our position in the universe, everything is moving away from us. He distinctly said that from ANY point in the universe, everything is moving away from it. How can that be? Something has to be in front of something. In fact, one of the panels mentioned the galaxy “in the foreground,” so wouldn’t it be chased by the galaxies in the background? This bothers me.

Then the UAA Planetarium featured a special event in which Michael Turner of the University of Chicago delivered a program in the Adler Planetarium and we got to watch it live here. His topic was “From the Big Bang to the Multiverse and Beyond,” and he said the exact same thing I’d heard in New York.

By now I was truly bothered, but with the audacity of my Third Third, I decided to get to the bottom of this. I wrote them both emails and asked for an explanation. I got two replies, and now I get it! Years of planetariums and reading and I just didn’t have my head wrapped around the universe just right.

This is the answer from Dr. Turner, Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics:

“The expansion of the Universe is NOT galaxies moving away from an explosion; but rather, an explosion of space with galaxies being carried along. Think of a rubber sheet (space) decorated with my hand drawn galaxies being stretched; that is the big bang universe. Space expanding in all directions and galaxies being carried along.”

And this from Dr. Or Graur of the Hayden Planetarium:

‘The problem here is with the word “moving.” When we talk about the universe expanding, we mean that distances between objects are getting larger. That creates the illusion that everything is moving away from you, and is why you’ll see this effect no matter where you are in the universe. But it doesn’t mean anything is moving, only that the distances are getting bigger.’

Aha! It’s not that we’re moving; things are just enlarging around us. Something in my world – my universe – just got more explicable. Something was illuminated and made sense on a foundational level. My understandable universe expanded!

This is a Helen Keller moment – the awareness that the word “water” is what water is. I’m sure you know what I mean. Maybe the expanding universe is not your thing or maybe you already understood about space and expansion; but you know that giant light bulb moment. The world shifts and makes sense. Aha!

I feel sort of pumped about emailing those guys. This time, I didn’t just give up and resign myself to my little vexing confusion – how many times have I done that! When you’re in your Third Third, “now or never” is an even less flexible ultimatum.

Now I’m deciding what other things I need to clear up.

Natural woman?

Saved! Saved by a miraculous infusion of fresh air and green space! Today I took a walk with Bonny, another Alaskan-in-New-York. Her apartment is right near a cemetery.

“Oh, wow, you’re near a cemetery! That’s terrific! You have air space, sunlight, real weather!” Then we walked along the Hudson River where the trail was asphalt and dirt, not concrete or fancy pavers. Oh, will the glories never cease?

We have discovered how un-urban we really are.

I marvel at the wonders of Central Park. On the free tours, I’ve gotten to know the docents who point out the brilliant planning of Frederick Law Olmsted. He designed the stone arches so the paths curve away on the other side so you always have a sense you’re entering another world. Roads are masked by the terrain, landscaping, and foliage. There are automobile-free areas and days, and the bird sounds are so sweet and varied. It’s quiet, peaceful, restorative. Central Park is truly a masterpiece.

But every single piece of that park is man-made. Ditto for the beautiful Lower Manhattan Waterfront Esplanade. Ditto for the glorious New York Botanical Garden (although it has an area of natural forest). Ditto for the thousands of children’s playgrounds everywhere. Ditto for the millions of buildings with people living on top of each other, looking out windows at each other, shielded from sunlight and weather.

Is it obvious that I’ve spent a month in Manhattan?

I hadn’t expected this to happen. I hadn’t expected that I’d develop King Kong fantasies of knocking down buildings. As I rode the subway through the Bronx – where the subway is really an elevated – I made it to all five boroughs! – I saw acres and acres of high-rise apartment buildings. Acres and acres! I felt like Edvard Munch’s The Scream (temporarily in the Neue Galerie!). I couldn’t breathe because – as my sister puts it – all those people are breathing the same air!

What I love about camping: all the air is unconfined air, air that isn’t inside four walls and a roof. It just … circulates. But here in New York, even the outside air is still confined. It’s confined by buildings, shade, scaffolding (not to mention all the people breathing in and out). Compound that with inside air that’s over-heated because you can’t turn off radiators so you open the windows to let in the air from outside, but it’s not really “outside” air as we know it. It’s not fresh.

One day it rained, and I never felt it. There is so much construction going on with so much scaffolding everywhere that rain never reached the ground. Besides, it’s so hard to wash the windows on these tall, tall buildings that most windows are dirty. How do people ever see the “real” outside or the “real” weather?

I was never a “city kid.” I grew up in the wooded areas of Long Island. New York City was a rare expedition by train. But in Alaska, by Alaska standards, I’m not a wilderness-aholic. I have friends who hike every day; I can pass on it. Mostly I can even be ho-hum about it.

But now I’m suffering Nature deprivation. I yearn – yes, I YEARN – for rawness, wildness, decomposition, rotting trees, decay, real dirty dirt. Anything that isn’t manicured.

I’d been so gung-ho for my urban experience that I wrung every drop out of it, and it’s exceeded all expectations. I have been enriched beyond measure. But I also learned something about myself because I take it for granted in Alaska: in Alaska, I have outdoors, wilderness, and Nature on her own, in her natural state.

You don’t get to be a big, incredible city in the middle of a wilderness or national park. New York is a big, incredible city, and I needed an injection of what it offers. Now I need a little recovery, I guess. Perfect timing!

Robots, Aliens, and Humans -- oh, my!

I read a lot. In fact, one of the total pleasures of my Third Third is that I get to keep on reading and reading and reading no matter what time it is. I figure I can sleep in or switch the next day’s activities from “challenging” to “laundry,” and put my brain on hold. Sometimes, the words swim because I am so tired … but the book is so good.

Every now and then, Tim will lift his head, scowl at the clock, at my light, at me. I won’t move, won’t say a word. Maybe he’ll think this is all a bad dream. And when he goes back to sleep, I put a pillow over his head so the light doesn’t bother him. Sometimes, I’ll go out to the couch. That’s if I know the book is so good I’m going to keep on going and going.

A friend recently asked me if I’d join her on Goodreads. The idea is great – book sharing is always great – but I just can’t handle another online thing. So I rely on my book club, on the recommendations of friends. Once, my friend Robin picked Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card for book club. It was an odd choice: sort of young-adult-ish, science fiction-y, but I was hooked.

I like a good story in a book, a creative imagination that tells a good story. But if the book can also shed light on what being human means, then that book turns on light bulbs, sparks conversations, dominates my waking life for a while. I think and think about it. To me, thinking has a lot to do with being human so thinking about being human just maximizes the whole business. Science fiction thinks about being human a lot (what with all those aliens).

I just finished an extraordinary book, Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. The main character is married to an astronaut roboticist who is also autistic. I love autistic characters (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, among others) because they think a lot and they think in very unusual ways. So an autistic roboticist is thinking about what makes a robot a robot and what makes a human human.

‘There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot, he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)” and finally “Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”

He is saying this because those things don’t make sense, there’s no logical reason for them – maybe reasons against them – so it wouldn’t be a robot thing. But then the bigger question: why are they human things?

Okay, you get the picture. If you were here and not in the ether, I’d be delirious if you read the book so we could talk about it. [Please comment if you do read it. We’ll talk.] But if you were here, you might roll your eyes because I could really talk about it to death. Sometimes my idea of human is a little too much thinking and talking.

Anyhow, Ender’s Game is like DVDs with lots of seasons and episodes: it has sequels and sequels. So I just read The Speaker for the Dead (the sequel), and in it, one of the little alien characters (who’s sort of half-animal, half-tree) is describing his life to the human colonists:

“The first life is within the mothertree, where we never see the light, and where we eat blindly the meat of our mother’s body and the sap of the mothertree. The second life is when we live in the shade of the forest, the half-light, running and walking and climbing, seeing and singing and talking, making with our hands. The third life is when we reach and drink from the sun, in the full light at last, never moving except in the wind; only to think and on those certain days when the brothers drum on your trunk, to speak to them. Yes, that’s the third life.”

Get it? He’s entering his Third Third, too! It’s his time in the sun, his time to reflect, to advise, to feel the full light.

The whole universe has a Third Third – even the aliens!

Where is it?!?

I just needed a postage stamp.  I keep all my stamps in a cellophane envelope I got from the post office. The envelope sits in the same slot in the vertical holder on my desk that it has sat in for years. Except that this time, it isn’t there.

     [Little interlude for a tantrum. I hate when things get lost!]

My things have places. My world is a world where things have places. Maybe their place was assigned by me, but I did that with care, forethought, and a bit of obsessive-compulsiveness. It’s a kind of subconscious calculation of frequency of use, ease of retrieval, and hierarchy of need: the stamps earned a top-of-the-desk honor position. Envelopes and stationery don’t merit that kind of position; they’re in drawers. Even the scissors are in a drawer.

But the stamps should be right where they’re supposed to be! Now is where I remind myself that I’d conscientiously bought lots of Forever stamps years ago before the price of stamps went up. Losing my stamps is like losing a gift card.

I’m a little concerned it’s like the disappearance of the paper cutter (which I believe got caught up in the paper recycling and was nevermore). Maybe I took the stamps with me to the post office to attach the right number of stamps and left the cellophane envelope on the car seat with old newspaper circulars. The thing is, if they were in the house, they would automatically head to their designated spot. I’ve trained them.

Not like the AIDS memorial quilt thank you. That could be anywhere. On World AIDS Day, I discovered Four A’s had brought some portions of the AIDS quilt here for a ceremony. Back in 1989, I was working for FedEx and got them to ship up the AIDS quilt as a public service. I’d known Cleve Jones with the NAMES Project when I’d lived in San Francisco and he started the quilt, and afterwards, he’d framed a thank you for me. I thought I’d bring the framed thank you to Four A’s and give it to them. My clutter going to the perfect place where it would be appreciated as treasure!

Except I couldn’t find it. Now I can’t remember if I de-cluttered it entirely, took it out of the frame and put it in a skinnier spot (like a file), or just can’t locate it. I tore the house apart.

This is the problem with de-cluttering: you’re never quite sure if you still have it or not. And if you have it, it no longer has a designated spot.

I have always said things aren’t lost, it’s just that people stop looking for them. (I once found my contact lens on a beach.) In his blog, Steve says he cleans up “instead of looking for something, which always leads to frustration because I never find it; but if I clean up, I’ll find other things and get something done even if I don’t find what I was looking for.”

Okay, I did get a lot done instead of finding the stamps or the thank you. But that doesn’t lessen this unease I feel about things not in their places. Like, what other disorder is operating in my universe? Maybe I’m watching a few too many Star Wars episodes (VI tonight and then I’m ready for VII), but it’s like a disturbance in the Force when things go missing.

I should practice being the kind of person who just says, “It’ll turn up,” and relaxes about it. Instead of being the kind of person who keeps tearing the place apart looking.

“Okay, it’ll turn up.”

Where were you in 1977?

You know what December 18 is, don’t you? The day Episode VII of Star Wars hits theaters? How could you not?

How about this: where were you when you saw the first Star Wars? (Is this on the same level as where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?) Star Wars was a phenomenon for us Third Thirders. Sort of like Harry Potter is for our kids (and us), but even more so. We were the children of the space race, the fans of the original Mercury astronauts. We watched Star Trek, and we were primed for the release of Episode IV.

I still remember: it was 1977, and my assignment was to wait on line at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco. [Yikes! I just Googled “Coronet Theater,” and found LOTS of people writing about seeing Star Wars there. Photos were taken of the line and they’re asking people to look at enlarged images and find themselves. This is like Woodstock!]

I was living with my boyfriend around the corner at the time. To this day, I have no memory of why we knew we had to see the movie. Maybe it was the trailers, but my job was to get on line early and hold space. I don’t think lines really formed for movies back then. The whole thing was very out-of-this-world … and so was the movie!

From the opening sequence, we were enthralled. It was spectacular on so many levels. I remember walking home, pumped with adrenalin, enthusiasm, appreciation for a job so well done.

I’m not a nut-case Star Wars fan. I never bought a light saber, never wanted to be Princess Leia, would never wear a costume to a movie theater. Nevertheless, I remain a permanent devotee of the Force and believe absolutely in a Force that our instinct and gut can access, but I think I may have believed that beforehand anyway (what with all my high school science projects on ESP). I still recall the image of Luke finally trusting in the Force.

So I excitedly turned to Tim, told him about my theory that Star Wars is to us like Harry Potter is to Sophie’s age range. His eyes sort of rolled, and he said, “Maybe for you.” What?? “But you were into the Mercury 7 astronauts exhibit when we went to the NASA Space Center.” “Yeah, but that’s not Star Wars.” It’s not??

So I guess this isn’t universal; I won’t even tell you about the friend of mine who turned to me at a Star Trek movie and said, “Wasn’t there supposed to be an R2D2 in it?”

Oh, but for me, it was all about space, the final frontier. I still have my scrapbook of John Glenn newspaper clippings. As kids, when we got a giant cardboard box from an appliance, one we could fit inside, we’d shout out instructions to roll, yaw, or pitch. Before I moved to Alaska, I went to hear Sally Ride speak. Afterwards, Jean-Luc Picard, Data, and Deanna Troi entered my life. Asimov’s Foundation series. And yes, there’s even Galaxy Quest.

I am scared of heights and have no wish to ever, ever, ever go into space. I don’t even like flying in planes. It was never about actually DOING it. It was about IMAGINING it. Even vicariously.

So now, I’m imagining the treat in store for me after December 18, and in preparation, I’m watching episodes I-VI over again. (Okay, this is maybe sounding a little over-the-top. I would roll my eyes at me if I weren’t me.) I’m checking DVDs out one-by-one from the library – and getting a whole lot more out of them thanks to pause and rewind. With subtitles, I can even figure out what that wretched Jar Jar Binks is saying.

I’m ready for the Big Screen. Are you?