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Image: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images
Image: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

SocietySeptember 1, 2024

Dad Astra: My father, the moon and me

Image: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images
Image: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

When I got the call to say my dad was on his final breaths, the moment felt personal yet framed in a very specific genre.

My father was a moon man. He wasn’t an astronaut. He didn’t have the right stuff for that. No, he marketed the moon to Americans as a member of NASA’s educational outreach program in the early 1960s. In his pinwale corduroy suit and aviator sunglasses, he was the Don Draper of lunar boosterism, spreading moon fever as he drove the “Space Mobile” from school to Rotary Club to shopping mall, his briefcase filled with model rockets and blurry moon photos.

He brought the fever home with him, too, but instead of infecting us with facts and science, he turned the moon into myth. In his telling, the seas, or “maria,” were wondrous places. The Sea of Tranquility was turquoise and rimmed in pink sand like a margarita. The Sea of Nectar trembled like Jell-O. He borrowed the Valley of Lost Things from the Italian poet Ariosto, a place where all the lost things of Earth reappear: pyramids of lost thimbles rose under lunar trees draped in missing socks. The mists were made of lost innocence and lost love. 

Dad in 1960 (Photo: Eric Trump/Supplied)

As I grew older and we grew apart, our common ground shrank until all we had left was the moon. Between the two of us, we’d practically memorised the Apollo 11 transcripts. When nothing else could set us jabbering, a lunar eclipse or a Strawberry Moon would. When our diverging politics or his angry alcoholism silenced us, a lunar landing anniversary got us talking. Through all the communication breakdowns of my teen years and beyond, we could rely on NASA-speak to get us through: “Houston, we have a problem”; “calm, cool, and collected”; “malfunction junction”; “sitting fat” – these verbal fossils reminded us of that glowing myth he’d created.

I’ve noticed that the relationships between fathers and sons, or father figures and figurative sons, are sometimes so fraught a universe is required to contain them; that sometimes without moons, comets, ringed planets – the destruction of a Death Star – it’s impossible for them to communicate their feelings. This is why Neil Armstrong, played by Ryan Gosling in First Man, needs to reach the moon to mourn his lost child; why Bruce Willis in Armageddon needs to land on an asteroid to tell Ben Affleck he’s the son he never had; why in Joyce’s Ulysses Stephen Daedelus and Leopold Bloom, surrogate son and father, come together at last beneath the “heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” 

Outer space is a fountain of metaphor, and the father-and-son-in-space genre is part of that. Let’s call it Dad Astra. In this narrative type, fathers and sons are in long-distance relationships. The chasms and fathoms of space symbolise the difficulty of contact. Earth’s gravity is the burden of longing and regret; celestial desolation mirrors the pain father and son leave in their wake.

Ad Astra

A model of the Dad Astra genre is the 2019 movie Ad Astra, in which Roy McBride, played by Brad Pitt, travels to the stars in search of his prodigal father, H. Clifford, an astronaut played by an Old Testament Tommy Lee Jones.  Cliff is living off the shoulder of Neptune, sulking after killing off his mutinous crew and sending out wrathful power surges that slam into Earth. It’s up to Roy to talk sense to him.

Never has getting in touch with Dad been more complicated. Roy hits escape velocity to leave Earth and land on the moon. Then, he leapfrogs to Mars, where he broadcasts his voice to the skies around Neptune, like that other forsaken son whose father art in heaven: “Father, if you can hear me,” Roy says, “I am attempting to communicate with you… I’d like to see you again… I hope we can reconnect. Your loving son.” 

He then hijacks a spacecraft to Neptune, and like Telemachus searching the Mediterranean’s oceanic cosmos for news of his missing father Odysseus, Roy plies the velvet-dark cosmic ocean for news of his father. As he drifts, he thinks of Cliff, explorer of “strange and distant worlds… they were beautiful, magnificent.” 

When the two finally meet, Cliff has a billion-yard stare and just wants to be left alone, like Dad in the garage with his minifridge. Roy travels to the outer planets to find a father he thought was dead to be told, “I never cared about you or your mother or your small ideas… I found my destiny, so I abandoned my son.” 

Ouch. Eventually, Roy and Cliff float weightlessly through space, tethered by a thin cord. “Let me go,” growls Cliff, and Roy obeys. As he watches his father recede into the void, only the cosmos is big enough to contain his anguished howl. 

So, three years ago, when I received the call that my father was on his last breaths, I knew the moment was personal yet framed in genre. We were separated by an ocean, half a continent, and Covid travel restrictions. We hadn’t seen one another in years. He was in Canada. I was in New Zealand, “not quite the moon, but after the moon… the farthest place in the world,” according to Austrian philosopher Karl Popper. 

I knew the sun had set over Canada, the sky above alight with a waxing gibbous moon he could not see with eyes in a body that maybe already he could not feel. When his girlfriend put the phone to his ear, I heard the crackling silence of the electrical signals tethering us. I thought of all those magnificent lunar seas he’d conjured, the beautiful Valley of Lost Things, where maybe now his drifting mind was searching for the thing only he knew he was missing. There was only one way to say goodbye.   

“I copy you on the ground, Dad. You take it easy on the lunar surface.” 

Keep going!
Sorry to tell you, but spring is still 22 days away.
Sorry to tell you, but spring is still 22 days away.

SocietySeptember 1, 2024

Breaking news: It’s still winter

Sorry to tell you, but spring is still 22 days away.
Sorry to tell you, but spring is still 22 days away.

It’s the first day of September, meaning thousands of New Zealanders will mistakenly assume it’s also the first day of spring. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith sets the record straight.

Across the nation, millions of New Zealanders will be waking up this morning with a renewed sense of wonder, a sprinkling of hope and, shall we say, a spring in their step. Why? It’s an unassuming Sunday, and you’re probably in one of two camps: someone who’s recovering from a big night out, or someone getting ready for a big day of chores (or maybe both). These situations will be underlined by the false hope that, no matter what happens, at least it’s the first day of spring.

Except it isn’t – not for you, not for me, and most importantly, not for this beautiful revolving sphere we call earth, which is the ultimate decider of these things. In Aotearoa, we have a tradition of using meteorological dates to signify the changing of a season, with spring beginning on the first of September, summer on the first of December, autumn on the first of March and winter on the first of June. I’m here to tell you that this is dumb and wrong, and we should stop doing it immediately.

We all have those pet peeves we allow to wind us up for no reason. My dad hates hearing people chew, my flatmate hates when people touch her with their feet, my ex-boyfriend hates authority and I hate people who try to wish me a “happy [insert season here]” on the first of December, March, June or September. But unlike most people, my gripes are backed by facts.

News flash: the weather doesn’t control our seasons. (Photo: Getty Images)

Meteorological dates have been recognised by meteorologists since the 1700s, and although you may trick yourself into thinking that today feels just that little bit warmer, the weather has no control over our seasons. If you want to ring in the true beginning of spring, you’ll have to wait until the 23rd, as the new season doesn’t come in until the equinox, which makes far more sense.

For thousands of years before the 18th century, the changing of the seasons was simply ruled by the equinox or solstice, known as the astronomical seasons. Every year, both hemispheres experience spring and autumn equinoxes as well as summer and winter solstices, which occur mid-month around the 20th-23rd, with earlier or later starts depending on the calendar year. This year, New Zealanders rang in autumn on March 20 and winter on June 21, and soon we’ll celebrate spring on September 23 and summer on December 21.

The equinox marks the moment at which the sun is perfectly aligned above the earth’s equator, tipping neither north or south. These events alternate with the solstices, when the sun is at its northern or southernmost point on the celestial equator – and these days also mark the longest and shortest days of the year. Isn’t that handy?

Look at societies across the globe, from Asia to the Americas, and you’ll find cultural traditions recognising the solstices and equinoxes, and see how the changing of the seasons offers connection and reflection among people. In China, since the Zhou dynasty, the Dongzhi festival has rung in the winter solstice with food and togetherness, while pagan traditions recognising the summer solstice, or midsummer, are still practised in parts of Europe with dance and bonfires.

The equinoxes are observed by Japanese Buddhists with Ohigan, a chance for reflection and honouring the dead, while the Mayan tradition of celebrating the equinoxes by watching a snake-like shadow appearing along the staircases of the Chichén Itzá in Mexico still persists.

Our way of ringing in the new season is purely vibes based, and maybe we should change that. (Photo: Getty Images)

New Zealand has no legislation recognising official season dates (it’s purely vibes based), and using meteorological dates has provided simpler bookkeeping for meteorologists. This system is also used in Australia, Austria, Japan, Denmark, Pakistan and Russia, while North America, the UK and parts of Europe recognise astronomical dates (the solstices and equinoxes).

Other nations have separate ways of recognising seasons, such as Sweden and Finland, with the thermal seasons, while countries along the equator such as Malaysia, Thailand and Kenya recognise two seasons: wet and dry.

However, it’s never too late to innovate, and while this country faces many pressing issues such as child poverty, climate change, shitty infrastructure and failing health services, a focus on officialising our seasonal dates wouldn’t go amiss. In fact, it might do more to curb the dumbing down of New Zealand society more than any hour-long maths or reading class could.

I’m not saying all of this to rain on anyone’s spring parade – rather, I just want the good people of Aotearoa to be properly informed and know they may be telling themselves a lie every first of September, December, March or June. And maybe if we started to recognise the true changing of the seasons, we too could make it an opportunity to slow down, reflect on and shed the past and look towards the possibilities of the future (complete with food and good company). We’ve already started doing this when Matariki comes, an event which also crosses over with the winter solstice.

So, as you go about your Sunday, revel in the knowledge that while many others will foolishly believe spring has sprung, you know better (and people are always grateful for someone who’ll say “well, actually …” when you wish them a happy new season).

You might feel a little down and out about the fact that you still have 22 more days of winter to go, but that’s life – for every gloomy day you have, the promise of something brighter is always around the corner.

But wait there's more!