Astronaut Adventures

My 15 year old son Jasper recently announced that he wants to be an astronaut. I want to encourage him to follow his dreams, no matter how big, challenging or daunting achieving them may seem. People do become astronauts. Why not him? I believe he has just as good of a chance as anyone. 

This,  along with a coincidence, a whim and information from two websites I didn’t even think to check the credibility of, is why I took the boys to Salem to attend a presentation by astronaut Chris Cassidy.

When we arrived at the community college where the presentation was going to take place there was absolutely no sign of a presentation.  My heart sank.

I looked up the information on my phone. We were in the right place at the right time. I tried calling both the contact #’s listed. One was for Greg, a principal at a local school and the other was Brenda, who works at NASA. There was no answer so I left messages. We walked all over the campus thinking maybe it was in a different building. We asked everyone we saw if they knew anything about it. No one did. A man checked the school website for us. When that showed nothing he suggested we call security because they know about all the events that go on at the school. Nope. They knew nothing about it.

I felt like there was really nothing else I could do. What started out as me wanting to be a supportive parent and help my son be inspired, had turned into a major disappointment. Great. I was starting to feel like an idiot. The kids were tired and bickering.

One consoling thought was that our hotel had a pool. We could at least go swimming. Then we saw the pool. The water had a very odd yellowy brown tinge to it. No one was going in there.  Our room was big enough, but pretty dingy. There were two ripped armchairs that someone had attempted to spruce up by pinning squares of fabric over the dirty holes on the arms. Things were just getting better and better.

Jasper fell asleep watching something about space on his i-pad. I sat there for a moment thinking about the crapy situation we were in. I couldn’t believe that this was how it was going to turn out.

I e-mailed Greg and Barbara, asking if they knew of any other presentations happening in the area the next day that we could go to. Then I started searching for more info. I came across a facebook post about a presentation that had happened earlier that day. It had Theresa, the reporters e-mail, so I e-mailed her. Within just a few minutes she e-mailed me back saying she knew Chris wasn’t going home till Thursday and there may be other presentations. She was going to contact someone who would know and get back to me.

At that point I started to feel a little better and that there may be a sliver of hope. I went to bed, but didn’t sleep very well. I woke up at 6am to check my e-mail. There was an e-mail from Greg. He said we were welcome to come to any or all of three presentations at his school that day! I gently woke up Jasper and told him the good news. I e-mailed Theresa to let her know she didn’t need to contact the other person for us. Then I received another e-mail from the Brenda telling us to contact Greg, and if I couldn’t get a hold of him to contact her again and she would help. I thanked her and let her know it was already worked out. All at once, we had so many ways it was going to work out!

We arrived at the school just as the presentation was about to start. We sat right in the front row. It was a great presentation and Jasper even got to ask Chris Cassidy a question. Crisis averted! It all worked out. I am one relieved mom.

After I got home I received an e-mail from Theresa saying she ran into Chris Cassidy and his uncle having lunch in Corvallis. She said she hadn’t seen my e-mail that said we worked it out yet, so she barged in and told Chris and his uncle about my e-mail. 

Then this morning, I got a call from the NASA space center in Houston asking if we made it to the presentation and how we liked it. Jasper thought that was pretty cool. I did too.