Musings and Tidbits

space oddity

He touched the glass of the window. He couldn't feel it through his space suit, but he pretended he could. In his mind, he could picture his daughter staring back at him through the other side. He wondered what she was doing now.

Perhaps she was sitting in the dining room, hunched over the dining table, her pencil scratching at her third grade homework.

Or had it been longer than that?

Would she be clutching her lunchbox, intimidated by the bustle of the cafeteria? Maybe she'd be stomping through puddles in her off-yellow rainboots, listening for the squelching sound that would bring a smile to her face.

He checked the giant clock that loomed in the control room. To his horror, he realized it'd been longer than he realized. How old would she be now? What if she was off to prom this very second? Probably with some idiot who couldn't look her in the eye as he shoves a corsage in her hands.

He gritted his teeth. She was his little girl, and no one could change that.

But with a pang, he realized that he'd missed her whole childhood.

Suddenly, the silence weighed heavily on his lungs, through his suit. All around him was the inside of the gloomy space shuttle, sterile and white. The antithesis of his childhood home, and yet somehow he'd managed to pull his shit together and climb up through the ranks as an engineer. Some life it was, hustling. Pinching pennies.

No life for a nine-year-old kid. His kid.

Regret stabbed his chest. He couldn't think like that, not if he was to survive the endeavor he was about to undertake.

Survive, eh? It would literally take one well-placed punch to kill you.

While true, he tried not to dwell on the fragility of everything he'd built.

Punch the glass. Or that one focal point in the oxygen diffuser that distributes --

No.

Maybe if you stepped out in the spacewalk without the suit. What a peaceful death that would be.

Stop-

Hell, you're a dramatic fucker. Why not tie the tubes around your neck--

Brown eyes pierced through him. Diana.

What would she be doing right now?

She may be dead, for all you know. Anything could happen.

He checked his watch hastily -- around 7 am there. Perhaps she was eating breakfast, getting ready for school. Wearing those silly flower sandals she swore was key to her success in mathematics. Stealing water bottles from the boys who pulled on her ponytail that he'd tried so hard to perfect, ruining it anyway.

Crafty little girl, that one.

He hated being away from her.

And now, millions of miles in the sky, worlds away, her boisterous laugh haunted his dreams. Taunting him, persuading him to just play with her at least one last time before their meaningless existences caught up with them.

She'd probably forgotten him by now, though. This pained him further; he had a daughter, but she had no father.