09 Apr Amaze Amaze Amaze
Over spring break, our family spent an afternoon at the movie theater, seeing Project Hail Mary. In the story, a man wakes up alone in deep space with no memory and no trace of the life he left behind, tasked with a mission of saving the world. Everything is reduced to that purpose. And then, slowly, something unexpected happens. He finds connection.
A space friend from another planet named Rocky appears. He is not at all what you would hope for if you were desperate for something familiar. Rocky is a five-legged being, his body made of rock-like segments arranged into something almost creature-like. He does not speak in words but in musical tones, chords that have to be translated before they can be understood. And still, he becomes exactly what is needed. A steady, loyal companion in a place that might otherwise feel impossibly empty.
When something unexpectedly good happens, Rocky responds by repeating the word Amaze three times. Amaze Amaze Amaze. It’s his way of marking a moment of pure joy.
We talked about Rocky the whole way home. There was something comforting in that idea, that even out there, in all that distance, you might not be alone.
A week later, watching Artemis II, I realized I wasn’t thinking about a space friend the astronauts might meet. I was watching what they carried with them.
They have what is required. Years of training. Knowledge. Instruments built with extraordinary precision. Everything needed to leave Earth and find their way back again.
And then, alongside all of that,
a jar of Nutella.
a Ziplock bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies labeled “Dad” with a smiley face drawn in Sharpie.
At times they laugh. Other times their eyes fill with tears. They reach for each other in group hugs. They look out at the surface of the moon and name the brightest place they can see after someone who is no longer here.
The people farthest from Earth are still carrying the same things the rest of us are.
There is something about human beings bringing all of that with them, the work and the love, the effort and the memory, traveling a quarter of a million miles just to see the moon with their very own eyes, that fills me with a kind of wonder.
To do something extraordinary and still hold the ordinary evidence of a life that matters. To look out at something vast and ancient and find yourself thinking about who loved you.
The love we carry for people. The way it goes with us, even there.
The fact that we go that far, and we still bring each other with us.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear Rocky again.
Amaze Amaze Amaze.