Snow Day

As I sit here with my son, enjoying a day off, I remember a snow day 25 years ago this week.


“Seymour, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull…”   I snapped off the radio by my bed, as the announcer confirmed my most fervent wish: snow day!   I pulled the covers gleefully to my chin as I considered how to spend my free day.  I could finish Sweet Valley High #12 and start #13, or challenge Amy to a Go Fish card tournament.  I could cook my special version of macaroni and cheese for lunch, an activity unsanctioned by our mess-averse mother.  But she would be going to work, so what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Snow days held delicious possibilities for a fourteen year old.   

After a morning of watching The Sound of Music for the five hundredth time, I made lunch for Amy and me, carefully cutting the stick of butter in half, measuring the milk, and using one extra cheese packet from a different box.  We ladeled ourselves big ceramic bowls of the steaming orange concoction and walked down the hallway from the kitchen to the family room to eat in front of the television—a forbidden delight.  We settled into the brown velvet couch (chosen because of our mom’s dirt issues), and Amy went back to the kitchen to pour us tall glasses of Coke.   I flipped through all thirteen channels before deciding on As the World Turns.   I was fairly bored by soap operas, but fascinated by the actress’ makeup.  Their faces looked like palettes to me; I imagined the makeup artist coloring and shading, lining and glossing, brushing powders on smooth, shine-free skin.  The effect was dramatic.  It reminded me of the charcoal drawings we did in art class.  Amy came back with our sodas which we set down with a clank on the large tinted-glass coffee table, and we settled back with our perfect snow-day lunch, discussing our afternoon sledding plans.

As the world turned, our regularly scheduled program was interrupted by the exciting news of a rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center.  The Space Shuttle Columbia was notable because there was a “civilian” on board the spacecraft—a teacher from North Carolina.  While I couldn’t relate to astronauts, a teacher was different.  I had a feeling that I wanted to be a teacher someday, and the prospect of one in space fascinated me.  Christa McAuliffe.  The name already felt legendary to me.  In the pictures, her eyes looked kind and I bet she was the kind of teacher who made school fun for her students.  Along with her were six other astronauts, who would accompany her into space, all donning bright orange spacesuits with the NASA logo emblazoned across the front.  I watched video footage from minutes earlier, as the Seven walked down the runway toward the Challenger, holding their helmets at their side.  They were all smiling, looking calm and composed.  I imagined that their unruffled demeanor belied a bubbling excitement underneath.   I leaned forward and put my lunch down on the coffee table to watch history unfold, live, as NASA launched the spacecraft for the world to see.  

“Tee minus 10,9,8,7,6…we have main engine start…4, 3, 2, 1, lift-off! Lift off of the 25^th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.” I could hear the exhilaration in the announcer’s voice, as his voice rose on the second “lift off.”   I watched as the shuttle launched powerfully into the clear blue sky, a nimble dolphin leaping from the water, rotating slowly, at once heavy and graceful.    I remember feeling amazed at how this profoundly dense machine could move so delicately, so purposefully towards the heavens.   I was mesmerized.   I kept imagining how Christa the schoolteacher felt, looking out the shuttle window, watching the earth become smaller and smaller.  

Then, 73 seconds later, the graceful arc turned into a hellish dive.  The spectacular scene became horrific, as the beautiful flying machine exploded into debris, dust, and fire; a mass of cloud spewing two snaky plumes on either side.   I didn’t know what was happening.  I looked at Amy.  She looked to me for an explanation, her blue eyes wide with alarm and confusion.

“What happened?  Are the astronauts going to die?”

At the time, I imagined that they might not. The sophisticated spacecraft had to have an eject button in that could catapult the astronauts to safety.  I imagined that later that night, they would be found, tangled up in a parachute in the middle of the woods somewhere, hurt but alive.   That hope was quickly dashed by the newscasters.   The six astronauts and one “civilian” were dead, likely incinerated instantly in the extreme temperature of the explosion.  I didn’t know why they kept making that distinction between astronaut and civilian.   To me, seven people had just been killed.  Just 73 seconds earlier, seven families who had been looking upwards with pride and triumph were now looking at the sky in despair and anguish.  

I was supposed to be in school that cold day in January, watching a film about eastern aboriginal tribes.  Instead, I had a snow day, and I sat on my couch in my house with my little sister watching a soap opera that got interrupted by a tragedy.