Reentry

One of the most dangerous, breathtaking moments of space flight is the process of reentry, or the moment a spacecraft passes back into Earth’s atmosphere and descends back down towards the planet’s surface. The process of reentry is highly controlled, anticipated, and has many chances for everything to go wrong. Depending on the type of spacecraft, the process may have different, recognizable steps and stages, such as the fireball of ablative material covering the command module of Apollo spacecraft or the balloon of the space shuttle’s parachutes, but the Icarus-like decent of space explorers always ends in one of two ways: everyone and everything burning up and dying or a ground crew pulling out and tending to the crew of astronauts who, upon reencounter with the pull of gravity, look more like a jumbled mass of wet noodles.

The past few years have felt to me like some sort of marathon space flight, trying to learn and experience as much as I possibly can while hurtling at approximately 17,500 miles an hour in orbit around my friends and family, my professors and academic requirements, and numerous clinical environments, absorbing, analyzing, and reflecting on new information and experiences while simultaneously incorporating them into clinical care. From this wet noodle vantage point, I feel as if I discovered and entered the field of child life about a week ago, blasting off into academia and clinical internships in New York City, passing exams, and then practicing as a certified child life specialist in Laos all within a single breath before rapidly descending back in a giant burst of flames. As I attempt to readjust to the pull of gravity here in America, one thing is abundantly certain to me – I need to go back out there.

Upon the conclusion of the first American spacewalk on June 3^rd, 1965, Gemini 4 astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White had a hilarious exchange that has thankfully been well documented in the annals of history.

“McDivitt: They want you to come back in now.

White (laughing): I’m not coming in… This is fun.

McDivitt: Come on.

White: Hate to come back to you, but I’m coming.

McDivitt: Okay, come in then.

White: Aren’t you going to hold my hand?

McDivitt: Ed, come on in here… Come on. Let’s get back in here before it gets dark.

White: I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.”

This remarkable snippet of dialogue between the Gemini 4 commander and his crewmember who wants nothing more than to continue to explore the vastness of space is as humorous as it is poignant. Sitting here on a couch in America, I commiserate both with the patient commander McDivitt and with White. I want nothing more than to be practicing back in Laos, but I also understand the need to follow through with the various responsibilities that brought me back to the states. I have spent the past week since I touched down at JFK searching for grants, applying to jobs, and hatching ideas that could launch me back to LFHC. As I adjust to the time change, shake off the jetlag, and wade back through the emails and detritus of belongings I left in the states before my journey to Laos, I am caught up both in my longing to return and my desire to somehow make a living out of this itinerant child life specialist practice. I am not yet certain of how I will make the journey back nor of how to sustain such a CCLS practice, but I am certain that the work I had the honor of participating in during my time at LFHC was more impactful and transformative than anything else I have ever done in my life and returning to a stereotypical, Western clinical environment seems like falling far short of any CCLS potential that I have.

Perhaps it is just the nagging effects of jetlag, perhaps it is nostalgia for the people, places, and experiences of the past three months, or perhaps it is today’s anniversary which steels in me a renewed urgency to live a life that I am proud of and which makes a positive, sustainable impact in the lives of those around me. As I find my way back from this wet noodle state and search for a way to head back out there, I plan on continuing this blog and on compiling a larger work of reflection on these past three months in the hope that, in sharing stories and reflections, I can expand upon the collective knowledge of what a child life specialist is, what it takes to become one, and what practice may look like in very different parts of the world. I thank you, readers, for coming along for the ride so far. It’s not over yet.

 

For more information about the Gemini 4 spacewalk: http://time.com/3739536/americas-first-space-walk-edward-white-makes-history-june-1965/