Love is in the Air by Katherine Pym

 

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Johnson Space Center Houston

I was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin. When I was 16 my dad landed a job at NASA in Houston, so we loaded up all our stuff and headed down there. 

Texas Country Road

Steer Skull

I knew nothing of Texas. My imagination considered it a scrubby land with cactus and steer skulls scattered about, from the Panhandle down to the Gulf of Mexico. Was I wrong? Oh my yes. 

Early NASA, Mission Control

We landed at Hobby Airport in mid-July. When the airplane door opened, the hot humid air took my breath away. I’d never seen palm trees and the highways were lined with them. The land was flat and you could see a long way, much different from where I’d come from. 

When I started school after Labor Day, I wore a long sleeve blouse and woolen knee-high socks. I don’t know what I was thinking. The days were still warm and I was miserable.

During the hottest part of the year, I walked outside and saw how heat had burst the rear window of a car. At Christmas, I was amazed we could wear flip-flops and shorts instead of heavy coats and scarves. I found out later that had been a warm winter.

But I adjusted. 

Apollo 11, the Lem on the Moon 1969

The kids at my new high school aligned themselves into two groups, the surfers and the cowboys. The surfers wore their hair longer, the cowboys drove trucks with rifles in the back windows. Along with most of the astronaut's kids, I fell in with the surfers. After all, Galveston wasn’t far away. It was wonderful to be so close to a warm seaside.

I made some good friends, with whom I am still in contact today. The school year rolled around to spring. The high school campus had an open air courtyard. As the prom neared, my best friend, Teri, waved me over one day. She stood near a boy who sat on a brick wall that lined a flowerbed. She said, “Kathy, this is Ricky. You are going to the prom with him and you'll be doubling with us.”

Ricky and I looked at each other. We shrugged and said, “Okay.” It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship we have to this day. 

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 Many thanks to Wikicommons, Public domain.

 Images in this blogspot fall under US copyright Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

 

Photograph, Aerial view of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Courtesy of NASA. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. 

Would I Change Anything? by Katherine Pym

 

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I’d change a few things but they are too sad. Instead, I’ll tell you a story.

My Mom

When I was a child we lived in Wisconsin where the kids ran wild. No one feared falling off a bike and breaking your head. We were told never to talk to strangers. Our parents expected us to obey this dictate and allowed us to run and play in the fields or explore the woods on the hill above our house.

During winter, it took mom a long time to gear us up in snowsuits, scarves, mittens and boots. We put socks over our shoes inside the boots, hoping to keep our feet warm. We ate snow until I ingested something yellow. We sucked on icicles that had fallen into the snow. I worried about sitting against the house, though, with icicles hanging off eaves. One of those careening toward your head wouldn’t be good. 

Gramma Brunn? Similar but not.

I was in transition when it came to Santa Claus. I was the eldest child in our family and I ran with the older kids in the neighborhood. Connie lived next door. She did not believe in Santa but Christmas was coming and I wasn’t sure. I told her I’d wait and see what the season brought.

My maternal grandmother died when my mom was nine. She had been shuttled from one relative to another during her formative years and pretty much raised herself. When I was still very young, an old lady and her son moved across the street. Her name was Laura Brunn. Rudy was a big man and a bachelor. He did not smoke cigarettes or a pipe, but he wheezed.

Gramma Brunn became the mother my mom never had. She taught her to bake wonderful German cakes and pies, cook dishes my mother would never have known, pickle almost everything left on the plate. Gramma Brunn babysat and we children loved her.

Back to Christmas and Santa Claus.

I was getting up there in age, about 6 or so, a big girl and should understand big things. Connie said there was no Santa Claus but mom and dad said there was. Would my parents lie? Connie shook her head and very seriously whispered, ‘There is no Santa.’

Rudy as Father Christmas

On Christmas day a big old Santa came to our house. He carried a bag over his shoulder. I wore pretty pink bib-overalls with lace along the shoulder straps. I felt special and grown up but I did not like the Santa Claus. He wheezed like Rudy who had never been very nice to us kids. He did not like it when we covered his sidewalk with chalk pictures or chased a dog through his yard. He was not like Gramma Brunn.

He wheezed his way through the bag, giving everyone a gift. Gramma Brunn sat on a chair watching with a cup of coffee in her hand, her white hair like a halo in the morning sun. Mom stood near her with a smile on her face.

Once Santa left, we played with our new toys. Afterward, Connie asked me if I believed in Santa. Even though Santa sounded like Rudy, I said, ‘I just don’t know.’

Many thanks to Wikicommons, Public Domain