Back to work today after a week off. Although I'm still working from home, and despite many schools re-opening this week, Sam's still at home too. Which means back to balancing home-schooling with work and feeling guilty about each one taking me away from the other. I've found this incredibly stressful and yet everyone else at my workplace seems to be dealing with it just fine.
Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny...
Bruce keeps telling me that, and I hope, I pray, it turns out to be true, but it's harder than ever to do so right now.
Still. We keep on keeping on. Because what else can we do?
On Saturday night at 10:10, Louise and I stood watching from our bedroom window as the International Space Station passed across a clear blue-black sky; a bright, glittering star moving at 17,000 miles per hour. It orbits the planet at that speed, 250 miles above our heads, every 90 minutes, but it's only visible at certain times and we'd read that Saturday night would be a good opportunity to see it. It was clearly visible for about five minutes as it passed overhead, and a few minutes later we also saw, briefly, what could have been Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket. (We'd been told it would appear shortly after the space station had passed, so although it wasn't as bright or obvious as the ISS, we're pretty sure that's what we saw.)
It may seem a trite reaction, but watching those lights in the sky and thinking about the people up there... so far away from all the trials and tribulations going on down here right now... I couldn't help but wish I was up there with them. Yeah, I know they're hardly relaxing on holiday, but...
The obvious song to play today was this one. It is still one of Elton's finest moments...
...but as I was searching for it in my library, I was reminded of this, from 60s psychedelic folk band Pearls Before Swine. It's the other side of Elton's story... and a direct inspiration on Bernie Taupin's lyrics to the song above.
My father was a rocket man
He loved the world beyond the world, the sky beyond the sky
And on my mother's face, as lonely as the world in space
I could read the silent cry
That if my father fell into a star
We must not look upon that star again
My mother and I
Never went out
Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out
Or to escape the pain
We only went out when it rained
