The workbench

 

Tom Corbett didn't know I was enrolled in the same Space Academy.

My late grandfather's workbench was a source of endless pleasure, but not for the reasons one might think.

Stashed in the musty-smelling basement, I could enter from the outside through a half door or through the back hall's trap door. I ignored the rest of the basement with its torn pool table, boxes of dishes, stored National Geographics and books.

The bench was immediately to my right as I entered. I would pull up a stool where my grandfather must have sat as he repaired whatever needed to be repaired or made things we needed or wanted.

The eight-foot bench was covered with things, besides dust, I had no names for. Things that spun, turned, fastened, clamped and unfastened. Things that were in little jars that moved around making the ship's engine rattle.

At eight I turned the bench into a space ship dashboard, part of my training at Tom Corbett's Space Academy, a program I watched during the week if my homework was done. Tom was my boyfriend, even though at eight, I was a bit young for a real boyfriend.

The two web-and-dust covered windows above the bench were really the windows to the galaxies. Through them I saw the planets and other universes. 

It didn't quite matter that sometimes feet and legs belong to my brother and his toddler friends running by might stomp on some planet or star. And my mother's or grandmother's voices way out in space could be explained away as recordings beamed from some far away galaxy. I would take a sharp left and leave them behind.

For several hours each week, I was a Space Cadet, venturing far from this Reading, MA basement. It didn't matter that my grandmother said, man would never go into space, I knew that they would just as I did so many afternoons.