A Small Good Out of the Sorrow

"The space shuttle fell out of the sky...."  That's how the song lyric went.  A bleak time of year, and a bleak day in our nation's history.  Who can ever forget the photo of the family looking up, and up--the photo capturing that moment, still in wonder and not quite in horror--not just yet.  It's like we forgot space was dangerous, that astronauts had died, even before leaving the launchpad.  The feeling around this mission was so lighthearted.  A teacher was going into space.  One of my own.  A new day, a new world, where routine space travel actually seemed in reach.  And then, disaster.  Horror.  Grief.  An auspicious beginning to 1986.

The darkness and depressive feeling of those days pushed my husband John to get moving, do something new, get himself out of the house.  In the wake of the shuttle disaster, he signed up for a painting class at the Indianapolis Art League in Broad Ripple.  It was there that he met a short, mouthy girl who was studying to be a teacher.  And the rest is history.  A small personal history...a small something good came out of that national depression and grief.  Twenty-five years ago.