Space Coast Mom
three kids, one husband, one hurricane, and a whole lot of prayer from Titusville, Florida

Welcome to my little corner of the Space Coast! Pull up a chair, the tea's sweet and the kids are (probably) asleep.

Hi, I'm Dawn! I'm 36 and I live in Titusville, Florida, right across the Indian River from the Kennedy Space Center, where you can watch the shuttle go up from a lawn chair. My husband Wade works on the shuttles out at the Cape. We'll be married thirteen years this October, and we have three kids: Amber (11), Cody (9) and our Bug (4). I keep two other little ones in my home on weekdays, so it's a full house from seven to five, and some days I don't sit down till everybody's in bed. My friend Sherry from church said I ought to write things down. So this is where I do that. Some of it's funny. Some of it's hard. All of it's us.

Wade sat with us in church this morning. That doesn't sound like much. It's the first time since June he wasn't asleep after a night shift or out at the Cape. Bug sat on his lap and drew on the bulletin through the whole sermon, a picture of our family with Daddy twice as big as everybody else. I don't know what that means and I'm not asking.

Last night was night five of our "homework." We took the lawn chairs down to the river and watched the big harvest moon come up over the Cape, and Wade told me about his daddy taking him to watch the Apollo launches from that same riverbank when he was a little boy. Thirteen years married and I'd never heard that story. We made it past twenty minutes. Then Cody came out in his pajamas wanting to know if the moon had anything to do with werewolves, and that was the end of homework.

Supper was spaghetti. Everybody ate. Nobody cried. I'm counting that.
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First counseling session last night, with Pastor Dale in his office at church.

I don't know what I expected. A couch, maybe. It was two folding chairs and his desk and a box of Kleenex he slid over to me before I'd even sat down, which made me laugh, which made me cry, so I guess he knew what he was doing.

He asked us each to say one thing we love about the other and one thing that hurts. Wade went first. He said he loves how I remember everything, every birthday and shot record and permission slip. And what hurts is he feels like I don't need him for any of it. I sat there thinking, well, whose fault is that, and then I thought, oh. Oh.

I said I love that he's steady. That when the kids were babies he'd walk them up and down the hall for hours. And what hurts is that I'm lonely. I've written that here before, but I'd never said it to his face.

Homework: twenty minutes a night, just the two of us, no TV, no kids, no bills. Night one we made it eleven minutes and then argued about how to load the dishwasher. Pastor Dale says that still counts. We go back Tuesday.
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The house is fine. The yard is fine. A big limb came off the oak down the street and that's about the worst of it in our neighborhood. We have enough hurricane food to live on till Thanksgiving: Vienna sausages, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter, and more jugs of water than I want to count. Cody wants to know why we can't just eat the Pop-Tarts now. Fair point.

But I can't stop watching the news from North Carolina. That storm we ran from went up there and the rivers came up behind it, and now there are whole towns under water. A little town called Princeville, gone under. People waiting on their roofs. We were so lucky, and I don't feel lucky. I feel like somebody else paid our bill.

The church is collecting for Carolina tomorrow. Amber made a poster for the lobby that says WE GOT MISSED. THEY DIDN'T. BRING CANS! I let her keep all three exclamation points on the original.
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Okay. Here's the whole thing, because I want it written down while I still remember it right.

Monday Floyd was a Category 4 and every map on TV had it pointed straight at us. Wade got called in to help button things up at the Cape and worked all night. He got home Tuesday at six in the morning, gray in the face, and said, "We're going." We live low, close to the river, and he's seen what water does.

We packed the van: three kids, the cooler, the photo albums, the baby books, Cody's Pokemon cards (non-negotiable), Amber's NASA scrapbook, Bug's blanket and every stuffed animal she owns. Mama, who lives over in Cocoa, went to her sister's in Sanford. We left at ten, headed for Wade's sister in Lakeland.

Everybody on the whole coast had the same idea at the same time. The road to Orlando crept, and when we got to I-4 it was a parking lot. Lovebugs all over the windshield, the radio saying the same three things over and over, and Bug asking every five minutes if the hurricane could see us. By late afternoon we gave up on Lakeland and got the last room at a motel on the west side of Orlando with a sign out front that said WELCOME EVACUEES.

Five of us, one room, two beds. The kids thought it was a vacation. They swam in the motel pool in the wind while the TV showed a storm the size of the whole state.

After they fell asleep, Wade and I went out and sat in the van in the parking lot so we wouldn't wake them. Windows down. The palm trees thrashing, that smell of rain that never quite came.

I don't know why that was the night. Maybe because we were both scared and it was dark and there was no dishwasher to talk about. I said, Wade, I don't feel like I know you anymore. And he said, I know. He said he takes every overtime shift because money scares him, with Amber's braces coming and the van on its last legs. And he said when he comes home everybody's got their routines and I've got it all handled, and he feels like company in his own house. Like a guest who ought to take his shoes off at the door.

I told him I'm lonely. I told him I'm tired of being the only one who knows where everybody's shoes are. We both cried, sitting in a minivan in a motel parking lot at one in the morning, while the biggest storm I've ever seen was out there in the ocean turning north.

Then he asked if I remembered the thing in the church bulletin about marriage counseling. I said I cut it out in July. It's been on the fridge under the pizza magnet since. He said, "I know. I saw it."

Wednesday morning the TV said Floyd had turned and was passing us by, way out to sea. Our coast got some wind and rain and that's all. We drove home that afternoon with everybody else. The house was fine. Our marriage, we'll see. But we talked. For real, for the first time in I don't know how long.

I'm writing it down so I can't pretend later that it didn't happen.
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Floyd. Nobody is talking about anything else. They're saying Category 4 and it's aimed right at us. Wade's out at the Cape tying things down and won't be home till who knows. The kids filled the bathtub and every pitcher in the house. Cody asked if we can take the TV. Bug asked if we can take the moon.

More when I can. Pray for us.
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Labor Day. Wade labored. Twelve-hour shift, his fourth this week.

I took the kids out to Playalinda with a cooler, three boogie boards and a gallon of sunscreen. Every family on that beach had a daddy in it. Daddies burying kids in sand, daddies throwing footballs, daddies asleep under a hat. Cody asked why Daddy never comes to the beach. I said Daddy's getting the shuttle ready, baby, and he said, "Again?"

Here's the honest part, since that's what this page is for. I'm not mad at Wade. I know that job. I know what it means to him and what it pays, and I know it's why we have this house. But somewhere in the last couple of years we turned into two people who leave notes on the fridge. Pay the water bill. Cody dentist Thurs. Love you, W. That last one is real and I keep them all. But I'm lonely. I'm lonely in my own marriage, and I don't know how to tell him without it sounding like blame.

We came home sandy and sunburned. Wade was asleep on the couch in his work shirt. The kids tiptoed. So did I.
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A report from the front lines of back-to-school:

Amber is in middle school now, with a locker combination and a whole new attitude. She rolls her eyes at me so hard I worry she'll sprain something. Cody has caught Millionaire fever and answers every question in this house with "Is that your final answer?" including "Did you brush your teeth?" Bug has decided she is a cat. She will only drink out of a bowl. Kaylee, one of the two little ones I keep weekdays, has decided to be a cat too, so now I keep one little boy and two cats.

Wade's schedule is on the fridge in red marker so the kids know when they'll see him. This week it's twice.

Our anniversary is October 11. Thirteen years. I want to plan something, and I'm scared nobody will show up, and I'm not even sure I mean Wade.
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Welcome to my new page! Sherry has been after me since spring, and Amber (11, knows everything about computers) helped me set it up.

I want to start with the night Columbia went up with Eileen Collins in command, the first woman ever to command a shuttle. It scrubbed twice first, which meant three nights of hauling three kids down to the riverfront with lawn chairs and bug spray. By the third night Bug was asleep in her car seat and Cody was asleep on the blanket, and it was just me and Amber awake at half past midnight when it finally went.

If you've never seen a night launch: the whole sky goes orange like sunrise came at the wrong time, and you see it before you hear it, and then the sound comes across the water and gets inside your chest. Amber grabbed my hand and didn't let go till it was just a star. Then she said, "A lady's driving it."

She has decided to be an astronaut. She's asked for a telescope for Christmas.

Wade wasn't with us. He's always working when one goes up. That's the job. When he got home at eight the next morning I started telling him about Amber, and he smiled, and he fell asleep sitting up before I finished the story.
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Write me! I love getting mail: [email protected]
Thank you to everybody who wrote to say you were praying for us during Floyd. It helped. It really did.

P.S. Wade has read every word of this page. He said I could keep it up.

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since August 1, 1999

Last updated: Sunday, September 26, 1999
© 1999 Dawn Pritchett · [email protected]