My Mom would have liked Defying Gravity

I am up 4:25am on a friday night (ok saturday morning) watching.... the NASA channel - yes the science geek's insomniac answer to the infomercial channel.

For a bit it was just the mission control room/center with the computers and the big screens. and not much else Then they started with the day's highlight's program.

They woke up the astronauts this morning with Pink floyd - "Wish you were here" and I thought looking at the screen and the song - Damn this is like that show coming up, "Defying Gravity". A picture of the shuttle, space and a cool ass song playing.... This led me to think - my mom would have liked the show DG - yeah I have not seen it yet and it may still flame and burn like a meteoroid, but she would have watched it.

She loved science fiction and especially space. This is because she was going to be a space scientist. She was in college in Florida in the training program - she would have been one of those mission control people. But then a few things happened, including she started going blind and then other issues and well she dropped out of college and never got back to that point.

But she always remained fixated on space. When we got cable, she found the NASA channel. She always had it on. As her problems got worse, she would lose herself in the channel. It became another level to her too, not just her dreams and desires and her science interest. But my mother also struggled with insanity. She was clinically diagnosed with a few disorders and labeled mentally insane. We had many... experiences because of that - but the one I mention in this odd entry that does have continuity, I swear, is she believed, and I do mean believed she was not from Earth. A person who is mentally impaired rarely knows they are and their reality is just that - real.

But she believed she was from another planet, one that has led me to have a fondness for a certain constellation, her favorite of course, ask me about it if you wish, that is another story, but well, because she believed this, she always was looking for a way to go home and to contact her home. She would often use the cable box to try and talk to the shuttle and use them and the NASA channel to maybe connect. She was so alone, very alone and had faith that someday we would contact others in space and she would finally make it home and not be alone and be happy.

I was a teenager and then young adult when we got cable and when she would have these episodes. I would sit with her sometimes through the night or morning or such, just watching the damn channel so she would not be alone and because sometimes she needed a person to work the remote control while she talked. Of course then, we would start to talk about the science, we would pull out my physics book and she would work through problem after problem and she had them right, make no mistake, my mom was crazy, but brilliant. She would be talking to outer space one moment and then solving the equations to get there the next.

I rarely talk about these memories and some I know my sisters are not that aware of even, so here this is as they wanted to know more about their mother and even father (who left when I was 8 and a half so I don't have great memories either and he was a bastard, but that is another story), but as this show, defying gravity, is coming up, many of these memories have been coming back.

Seeing a space shot with a song playing in the back ground - the concept of being alone and searching for life - just the whole package....

So yes, I am interested in this show, most think it is just because I like sci fi in general and because I have this infatuation with a certain actress starring in it, which, yes, that helps :P but there is a deeper reason why I want to watch it.

I share this because it reminds me, along with so much else, that often a person's actions are not always so obvious and that there may be multiple reasons and stories. That is what I like to dig out and tease and try to find, the layers and stories that make up the world and people and life.

So - I will be watching. Sure mainly because I like a certain actress but also to pull out other details and other connections, ones that might not be so obvious...