Sad Day for Science
a visit to the chabot space & science center
I’m not sure what O understands “science” to be but she loves it. Her great-uncle once showed her how a hard-boiled egg spins differently than a raw egg and she asked for the experiment to be repeated at home. All kids like science, is what educators say: to explore what is unknown and then uncover what’s known, but I remember the way the frogs smelled of formaldehyde in eighth grade. There’s nothing better than taking your kids to a great science museum, say the cheery mom blogs who write of fun summers, and so off we went to Oakland, where the Chabot Space and Science Center sits on the edge of the Redwoods.
“Look at the rainbow,” I said about the colored poles around the quiet museum parking lot.
“I saw them,” O said, as she skipped to the entrance.
At the front desk three people sat in a line and the one on the right said with a smile, “The planetarium is closed for the next few days but we are offering half price admission.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling confused. So we can pay half price for nothing - how does that sound? I have been sold less for more. “What’s available?” I wanted to know — although we were too far from home to turn around now.
The person on the right looked at the person in the center who explained that it was just the movie part of the planetarium that was closed and that the rest was open.
“Ok, " I asked the person in the middle, “so are there hand-on exhibits that are open for kids?”
They looked to their right at the person on the end who had a lot of the answers.
“Third floor,” he said, like he’d done this before.
I ponied up $20 for the two of us and we walked up the first two floors where blown-up pictures of the universe beckoned us to enter a different exhibit. I summoned big responses to small but interesting displays: one about how your shadow reveals an image when it blocks the light near the screen of a projector and another about how regular objects – a CD case, a pair of plastic goggles - become rainbow colored when seen through a lens. It felt nice to step away from our usual to consider these overlooked wonders.
In the second room there were some monitors.
“Look, you can see a live feed of the International Space Center right there, right now!” I said with genuine excitement. Only I soon realized that the image was a photo made to be able to navigate in a three-dimensional way and that the live feed only referred to a picture of space with a far away shape.
A man sat by a science-fair size experiment and explained how not light was was made of up the whole spectrum of the rainbow and that we could understand the material of different stars just by observing the colors of light they emitted. Before we could discuss further an announcement came through the under-attended space about a presentation in the auditorium in 10 minutes. Olive was game.
Before we entered I didn’t text my mom-friend the yelp review to say: this place is probably terrible but in a wonderful way. I was feeling pleased about how when kids are young they can be delighted by the simplest things but wasn’t sure everyone was feeling that way so I kept the sentiment to myself.
In the theater a very well meaning teenager with poor public speaking skills began a presentation on light that began with the question: What is light? The answer was so technical it slipped my mind immediately.
We sat next to a mom and three kids who, I’m guessing, were all homeschooled, based on them being both very well behaved while also slow to acknowledge other kids in the room.
One of the three kept shouting out answers to every question - as we were welcomed to do - after which O immediately shouted out the same answer she heard the other kid say.
“I want you to remember you have your own answer to offer,” I said, “it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong.”
“I know,” she said.
On the next slide that appeared hanging above us on the dome shaped ceiling there were various shapes that were all bioluminescent.
“What are these?” the asked the well-meaning teenager asked the audience.
“Jellyfish!” our neighbor shouted out and was affirmed by the assistant to the soft-spoken teenager who then went on to describe how the jellyfish got its glow.
“And what’s this,” she asked of a blob shape below the jellyfish. “You can just guess.”
The room was quiet for a few seconds.
“Algae,” I said, in my own confident voice, loud enough to be heard by the volunteers, who looked surprised.
“Good guess!” said the one at the podium “if it was a guess.”
Was it a guess? It made a lot of sense, in looking at the blog with the right answer but I felt like it had been served up to me for Olive to observe me being seen in a group, just a moment of shine.
At the end of the presentation we were invited to go up to the third floor roof to see ourselves through infrared light and how our body image changed as a result of the rays. The desolate deck held up three silver shed-like structures housing enormous telescopes - open on Friday and Saturday - for the public to observe the stars. We stood in front of a camera that turned our skin white and made our faces blank and noticed, instead, the folds of our clothes, our shoes and also our hair. We looked like two little goblins ready for mischief.
Another exhibit on the roof was a circle of speakers inside a little enclosure that were set-up to encourage listeners to guess the sounds that came out. This, unlike the security camera-like image, made Olive scared which made me feel so sad. Even though there are so many practical reasons for her feeling – why would she be able to identify feet crunching on snow when she has only seen snow once! And also - of course the sounds of the world can seem scary the less experience you’ve had with a variety of landscapes – but it seemed to indicate a gap between my experience of childhood and hers, and also between what might be possible for her ever to know. This feeling came like a warning.
Inside an exhibit offered a variety of materials with standing dress frames. Each material was matched with a description of what kind of natural challenge it might help you overcome. For instance windbreaker-like material for the wind. The assignment was to build a version of a space suit that might protect your from your own invented habitat or threatening environment
“Here, you can create a costume with these fabrics on the model shapes,” I told Olive - omitting the details of the assignment and asking the homeschooled kid for a few pins - which she and her sister had been avidly collecting. To be fair, she was also generous with them and explained where they were stored along the magnetic strip of the display.
At that very moment, while Olive draped heat resistant cloth over the shoulders of a life-sized doll, my brother called from NY (2X) which meant only that one of our parents had unexpectedly dropped dead. In fact it was because of the smoke, which I knew had been bad over the city but had gone from bad to worse to really a lot worse.
I downplayed the shit as we are apt to do in our family when another person is feeling anxious.
“Just remember that some cities have terrible air every day of the year,” I said, as if that’s what anyone wants to hear at that moment. But in some way that helped: it was not like their kids were going to inhale eight packs of cigarettes EVERY day for eternity. Just definitely today.
“It was terrible.” I told him when he said that no, they all were alright but was just calling to see if I had any suggestions since he knew we had been through it before. “I’m so sorry, I don’t. Basically, we spent two days trying to drive to the most green area of the map (representing breathable) until there was nowhere within three hours left to go. After that I went crazy with worry for two days and then it passed.”
“Ok,” he said, “sounds about right.”
“Let me call you back later,” I said. “I’m feeling a little helpless (I didn’t say). I’m just at the museum with Olive.”
After we talked I checked on the AirVisual app which I had obsessively done when the west was smoke covered two years ago and was horrified to see the high hazardous levels reflected in purple circles with 300 numbers in the center. I hadn’t realized it was far worse that day in NY than it had ever been in LA.
“Look at my outfit,” Olive prodded, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the blobs of overlapping colors on the screen.
“What does yours protect you from?” asked another parent kindly, perhaps noting that I was glued to my phone and ignoring a kid who was in need of attention.
“It’s just a costume,” Olive said and to limit more confusion I explained to O how the instructions had been about environmental challenges.
“It’s an outfit,” she kind of repeated, still wanting to talk through the details of what she had made.
“See, you’ve got a large plastic collar” I said, “so that, for example, would protect your face from a lot of things, like sand.”
In an effort to stop flailing we went downstairs for some lunch, only the cafe had no actual food. This is an exaggeration. The hot lunch was mac and cheese that was in a paper cup that would hold hot water. I didn’t ask if they had any on hand. Meanwhile, at a table nearby, a very earnest white man in a safari hat was talking quickly to a camp of all boys about the possibility of aliens. We bought a stale danish and when Olive left the cheese center on the table and found her way to a large prism, I began a downward spiral.
I hated myself for my own hyper-focus on my just my kid while everyone that was important to me was unable to leave their houses without breathing easily - and who can breathe easily when they can’t leave their homes! The low-fi nature of the exhibits and the news that each kind of gas emits its own spectrum of colors had lost all its beauty and charm. Even my amazement that scorpions glow blue in the full moon as a signal that it’s too light out to hunt had grown dim. It was as if we had been abandoned by science, right then and there, in the actual museum of science and there was nothing to be done. Science was now inhabited by fanatics, retired people, soft-spoken teenagers and various moms and kids trying to make up a summer.
I texted my brother about how bad it looked and about how Boston was in the green zone but who knew for how long. Then I tried to create a strategy out of nonsense. Let’s move dad from his house to mom’s house which is essentially down the block, because what more can you do when that’s all you’ve got.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about money,” I said in therapy the next day, and how it’s good to have some, as if I were the first person on the planet to say such a thing. “Yes,” G agreed, having just been through the apocalyptic haze, as if we hadn’t been talking about money for the better half of a decade.