Michael Collins was the world’s first loneliest man. His fellow Apollo 11 crew members, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, hold a bigger footprint in history with their historic moon walk in July 1969. However, while those two strolled and bounced along the moon’s surface, Collins kept the engine running in the command module Columbia: over 21 hours alone, circling the moon once every two hours. When traveling on the backside of the moon, all communications vanished between him and any other human being. In his autobiography, Collins shared his thoughts from his solitary flight.
“I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life… I feel this powerfully—not as fear or loneliness—but as awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation.”
Apollo missions continued through 1972, and six other pilots flew solo as Collins had on Apollo 11. In total, seven humans experienced solo flights sending them into complete isolation at the backside of the moon: the tiniest microcosm of human experience.
As for astronauts who walked on the moon? Armstrong was the first but not the last. Aldrin stepped onto lunar soil 19 minutes after Armstrong. Then, from 1969 to 1972, the number of astronauts who walked on the moon during the Apollo missions broke double digits: 12.
As for humans who have been in space? With the launch of SpaceX Crew-3 on November 10, 2021, over 600 humans have traveled into space
As for the rest of us? Our life experiences probably won’t include taking flight to space. In fact, we all fit into larger populaces of experience, whether professionally, personally, or socially—or some other “-ly.” Looking at our cumulative experiences, we aren’t the first, and we won’t be the last.
I mention this because of recent conversations with other moms about how it feels when a child leaves for college. A year ago, Will received his first college acceptance letter. At that moment, it became fact that my older child would be moving away from me and into a whole new solo life. The year that followed was a rollercoaster as we experienced the last-of-the-lasts, each in our own way. Will spoke of the end of his childhood. I’ve admitted in writing before that I found myself in a spiral of wondering if I’ve done enough as a parent. I wasn’t scared or worried about what was to come for Will; rather I was reflecting on the past and trying to hold some kind of life-o-meter up to it, looking for a straightforward answer like one finds on a thermometer. Was there anything I needed to catch up on in the few months before Will moved to independence? Had I provided all I was supposed to?
The fuel that powered this thought stemmed back to moving through the year of breast cancer. Of dancing on a thin line between living and dying. We all know subconsciously the line is there, but in good health, it lies way out on the horizon with little thought given to it. Once treatment completed, I contemplated how I was parenting and ever so quietly changed to encouraging independence in my sons. It was a kind of living meditation on my own mortality. If I kick off tomorrow, how best can I help them today to live without me?
Don’t get me wrong, I still carry a bowl of cereal and strips of bacon to my teenage son curled up under a fleecy blank on the couch next to the glow of the Christmas tree. And when Will comes home from college, I’ll make homemade mac’n’cheese for him and pick up the empty bowl from his vacated seat. However, when it comes to decision making and planning for the future, I’ve tried hard to hand over the reins to them. Guiding less and letting natural consequences be the teacher. And for each of my sons, the timing has been different in how they move toward independence. For Will, it was a quiet, steady forging ahead with all things he loved. For Liam, it has been many quickly emerging in-my-face-“I got this, Mom!” moments. Weary is the mother; then a turn—delighted and proud is the mother!
Yet there’s that relentless question about whether or not I did enough. When I humbly—and tearfully—broached the subject with a friend whose sons are a few years older than mine, she knew immediately what I was talking about and reassured me that her experience was the same. Another friend whose sons are a decade older than mine remembered the same self questioning; she calmly and rather stoically “mm-hmm’d” to my verbal rhetoric. And when I sat at a table with women whose children had also just left for college, they admitted to wondering the same. With a fierce inexplicable intensity.
Mothers. We aren’t circling the dark side of the moon. We aren’t one of a handful to walk on the moon, or even among the few hundred to fly in space. So many, many more have gone before us on this journey. We aren’t the first, and we won’t be the last. There is a sense of lightness and relief in that fact—perhaps even welcome awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence—almost exultation?
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130401-the-loneliest-human-being