Toughen Up: A Traumatic Memoir...a Traumoir

Because my father was always working, and my mother didn’t drive, we rode the bus everywhere. We took it to Panorama City, to go shopping, we took it to The Fox Theater to see The Jungle Book and we once took it to Los Angeles International Airport to see the Apollo 11 astronauts when they came back from the moon. In our family, we were woken up for every single space launch out of respect for Jack Kennedy— and in truth, you didn't even have to be awake. We were just taken out of bed, propped up in a chair, they launched the rocket and then we were thrown back in bed...in Camelot! Camelot! But the night they walked on the moon, like most everyone else on earth, we all were crowded around the television set, about to “turn blue” when the Eagle finally landed. We heard our apartment complex explode with the sound of cheering and my engineer father took me outside in his high waisted khakis and white t-shirt, and in the heat of the night, he pointed at a bright crescent in the sky, and said: “Men are walking on that tonight.” So our mother took us on the bus for half a day to LAX to see Neil, Buzz and Michael and we were running late so everyone was already lined up when we got there. The astronauts were just coming off of the plane. I’m sure the worldwide tour was far more physically demanding than the actual voyage to the moon, as they were forced to land at airports, get out, walk around, wave, get driven around, wave more, then get back on a plane and take off for another airport...but we were late, and we were standing behind the row of people pushed up against the cyclone fencing, and I was a little seven year old and suddenly, I was lifted up under my arms by a complete stranger, who saw that I couldn't see, and he floated me weightless, high above the astronauts, and held me over his head, slowly angling me toward them as they walked by waving and I remember waving back, as I looked down on their blue suits, freshly shaved faces and tight NASA crew cuts.