The Eagle Has Landed

For one month I mused about the “moon” I went out each night to find my way with the “moon”. I must admit that this self-imposed assignment challenged me and stretched my way of musing. It wasn’t long before musing, took on a whole different meaning for me. Everywhere I went I saw something related to the moon; my awareness was heightened, my senses awakened. I kept little files with cards, quotes, photos, and information. Little notes of paper with one-liners were stuffed inside the file pocket – notebooks scribbled with one-liners… After my musing assignment of “Moonstruck” was written - I filed away my musing thoughts on the “moon” and my paper files laid dormant until now….

…. …. here I am in the Centrum of Amsterdam, sitting window side, with a fiction novel writing assignment to do..

“PAGE ONE” … write page one for your fictional Apollo XI novel with one of the following narrators.. Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, Michael Collins, or someone close to them (e.g. wife, parent, child, best friend) ….and the point of time in which your novel begins …before, during or after the mission.

Ahhhh the “moon” musing began, it is now that I have come to appreciate and understand how the musing process blends into our other writings. I enjoyed this assignment of fiction and the introduction to writing Page One of a novel.

I chose Neil Armstrong’s child as the Narrator with the following plot:

His father was the Apollo XI Astronaut who took the fist step on the moon. Forty years after his famous father stepped onto the moon; his father was faced with the challenge of making a decision to help end his son’s life. Legislation passed for assisted suicide. Neil Jr. was diagnosed with ASL, leaving him debilitated for the last five years. The last five years had aged both of them beyond imagination. Both father and son have shared together this great passion for space research. Now, his famous father is challenged with making the final decision. He is struggling to find the courage. He had won three air medals while serving in the Korean War at the young age of 20 but nothing has prepared him for this. The pain is getting unbearable for his son. The story plot is a tangled web of moral values and debate of the right to end a life – death with dignity.

~

“The Eagle has landed” … my father’s voice transmitted from outer space through the side speaker of the cabinet style television.

I sat in front of our new colored screen TV, my fingers twisted and interlocked with one another, my body erect with nervous tension. Minutes passed before I released my held breath. My father’s left foot was floating without control; finally he reached forward with great effort and historically steeped onto the powdered surface of the moon.

Now, this historical year of the first African American president, I lay here in this Bluelake hospital bed; I have become a shell of a man, gaunt and sick, my eyes sunk back into my head. I have no voice but I am capable of sight and sound. My fingers remain interlocked with one another lying across my lifeless body; I have no control of my muscles. I am in pain.

My famous aged father sits by my bedside, his head is pocketed deep in his hands, his long fingers pressed into his skull, and his knees indented from his elbows. His life is being torn away in a gust, similar to when his footprints on the moon were blown away by the engine blast as he thrust into space on that July 22^nd 1969.

When I close my eyes I feel the tears well up under my eyelids. The prognosis is without hope - rapid and final. “The Eagle has landed”.

I can sense that my father is searching for courage to carry him through this. “Will he take this step?”

The room is dark, except for the glint of moonlight though the window. I watch him stare out the window; the moonlight is floating over the water like lace on black velvet. He suddenly bends in half, he bursts into tears and cries like a lost child.