We Were Teenagers in Love - (Part II - Final)
In which Teófilo reminisces about falling in love amidst the first Space Shuttle launch.
The year 1980 came to an end on an awful note, I don’t mean because John Lennon was murdered in December of that year. My Mercie was vacationing out of town for Christmastide. Before leaving town she gave me a Christmas card. In it she wrote some playful verses about my shoes being rife with cockroaches and mice. I dissected the card in search for her "true feelings." I could not tell. Mine were still developing too, and I was confused. I did give her a card but I don’t recall what I wrote.
Tío Pin and his family had arrived from their northern Puerto Rico homestead to spend Christmas with us. It was the first family reunion since Titi Annie's passing.
One day during this time I'd wanted to be with my friend "Z" and attend some holiday-related Church functions. Mom forbade it. Then she proceeded to call me "el santo" ("the saint, the holy one") in that cutting way of hers in which her dripping sarcasm made one want to bathe for feeling soiled, impure after her laying on. I remember my cousin Teresita looking at me pitifully, sadness in her eyes after Mom’s diatribe.
No one took my side. The house was full of people, but I was all alone.
1981: To Touch the Sun
If my sophomore year was my best year in high school, then 1981 was the best calendar year. In January 1981 I received a letter from the Space Shuttle Student Involvement Project’s staff, informing me my submission had earned me a regional prize. With it came two plane tickets, one for me and one for my science teacher, to attend a symposium that was to be held the following April 14th, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The prize triggered a measure of peer popularity at school, ensured my admission to the National Honor Society, and led to a TV and a newspaper profile of yours truly and my proposal.
I’m sure you’re dying to know what was the experiment I’d proposed. OK I’ll tell you.
I remember reading in some science magazine that the Sun underwent a “pulsation,” a “beat.” Picture it as the Sun being a giant “gong,” ringing periodically. The pulsation took place at intervals that were perfect fractions of a day. As a consequence, the scientific community was uncertain if this periodicity was proper of the Sun, of if it was some weird atmospheric effect proper to our Earth.
My solution was “let’s go in orbit above the atmosphere and find out.” The Space Shuttle was coming online, and the first shot was scheduled for April 1981. So, why not? Pack some astronomy instruments in a future mission and clear the doubt from orbit.
I also suggested a hypothesis that could’ve helped explain the phenomenon. I was fascinated by gravity as a force at the time, so I proposed the gravitational pull of all the planets combined was responsible for the solar pulsations. They liked the hypothesis too.
But it was wrong.
Years later, when I’d learned to sum infinitesimal quantities in one fell swoop, I understood my hypothesis was untenable. The planets weren’t massive enough to exert such a pull and trigger such an effect. Worse, anything massive enough to have a gravity able to make the Sun “beat” would’ve destabilized the orbits of the inner planets - Earth’s included - if not destroyed them.
The real explanation for the pulsations lied in the Sun’s internal processes. Let’s not forget the Sun is a huge thermonuclear furnace, converting 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium each second. The “missing” 4 million tons the Sun turns into pure energy that then takes about 100,000 years to ebb-and-flow from its core to the Sun’s surface. This pure energy, in the form of gamma rays, loses enough power by the time it reaches the Sun’s surface to leave the Sun in the form of optical white light. From there it takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth, making possible life on this planet.
The manifold interactions between energy generation, transmission, and outward ebb-and-flow is what makes the Sun “beat.”
Nevertheless, ascertaining the pulsations’ veracity from orbit was a plausible idea and they did like it.
A Double Launch
The “she loves me, she loves me not” approach I’d taken was generating anxiety and misunderstandings between Mercie and me. I had to take the initiative to get rid of all doubts. I did, in the form of a letter dated Friday, April 10, 1981. I gave it to her at school.
It also happened that same day that a circular halo surrounded the noonday sun. People from all over town saw it and ascribed to it various technological or mystical origins. As for me I only saw a beautiful solar halo. I chose not to guess about its meaning. I wasn’t in the mood to seek omens. Or maybe I was afraid to guess.
In the letter, I opened my heart to her. I asked her to become my novia, my steady girlfriend but in better words. I placed the entire relationship in Jesus’ hands. I told her if she said “no” I would respect her decision and just be “friends.” After I gave it to her, I shifted my focus onto the upcoming trip to Alabama now slated for April 14th.
My Mercie has kept that letter all these 42 years.
I visited Mercie on that Saturday and asked her about the answer to my question. She was playful and wanted me to repeat the question. I was unable to. She said she would answer me the following day, Sunday. She still had to think about it.
I wondered what was there to think about. It was pure torture.
Sunday April 12th, 1981 dawned with promise. It was Palm Sunday. It was also the day of the first Space Shuttle launch, Columbia, manned by veteran astronaut John Young and first-timer Bob Crippen. I went to Mass and then watched religious movies on TV. Otto Preminger’s 1963 movie The Cardinal, starring legendary actor Tom Tryon, was on in Spanish translation. I sat by the phone. I don’t recall if I called or if she called. After some pleasantries, I think she made me repeat the question and I gasped the question back to her: que si quieres ser mi novia. She then answered “Nnnn (sinking my heart)…yes!” - I had turned blue and was left gasping for air. Then I praised God.
Our seemingly chance encounter a few months before had reached its conclusion. I would not be alone ever again.