Minnesota Prairie Roots

My son's mouse pad & childhood toys

Tuesday night, and we are standing on our driveway, looking up the hill to the northwest.

I am the first to spot it, the dot of bright light that is more than a star, different than a planet and most definitely not an airplane.

“I think I see it,” I point. “Is that it, there between the trees?”

We move a bit to our left and again, I see it, this brilliant spot gliding in a straight course across the sky. The bright blip disappears behind the canopy of trees, hidden from our view.

But then the light emerges, this time sailing across the clear expanse of inky sky.

We—my husband, son and I—have just seen the International Space Station.

Although I’m not much of a space person, this sighting seems rather cool even to me.

So the next night, a half hour later, just minutes before 10:00, we are staked out in our driveway again. My 15-year-old space enthusiast son has coaxed my husband and me off our comfy spots on the recliner and couch. I consider just ignoring his invitation to view the space station. I am tired. But then I realize that if a teen wants his parents beside him, sharing his interest, then I best stand beside him.

Wednesday evening we are cranking our necks to the sky almost directly above our house. This view is as good as we will ever get of the space station, which travels some 220 miles above the earth, making nearly 16 orbits daily, moving at an average speed of 17,227 mph.

This is impressive stuff.

As we watch, we wonder. Can those aboard already see New York? And has the toilet, which wasn’t working last week, been fixed?

I learn, too, that we can see the space station because it reflects off the sun. “Oh my gosh, Mom, didn’t you know that?” I hear.

No.

My space knowledge is limited, simply because the subject doesn’t interest me. Unless you count Lost in Space, the science fiction television show that aired in the mid to late 1960s. That interested me. But even then, I think I was more intrigued by the cute Major Don West and in hating the villainous Dr. Zachary Smith than the space aspect of the show.

And just for the record, when my baby brother was born in August 1967, my sister and I lobbied for our Mom to name him Don, after our sci-fi sweetheart. She named him Bradley.

I think, too, how very impressed my 15-year-old would have been, sitting before a television screen watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step onto the moon 40 years ago on July 20, 1969.

All of these thoughts flash through my mind as I gawk at the sky, at the International Space Station on a clear and cool Minnesota night.