Complementary Careers for Two Visionary Brothers

I already know the boys' future careers. Ian is going to be an astronaut. He wants to work for NASA and live in Alaska. I once explained to him that the NASA crowd likes to work in warmer places like Florida and Texas and California, but I told him that if he were an astronaut, he could probably afford a commute from Alaska to the sun-belt, from time to time, as needed.

[What I didn't tell him was about the current state of the space program. He is determined to work for NASA, but I think he could probably get on with his career a bit faster if he uses the advantage that he has over most Americans, namely an aunt who speaks, and could teach him Mandarin. Of course, if he lives in Alaska, that opens up prospects as a cosmonaut as well; after all, we're already Russian Orthodox, and Russia, I discovered as recently as 2008, is basically waiving distance from the front porch of most, or all, Alaskans. But with his intellect and determination, he might be able to get the American program back on track, and avoid having to navigate in a tonal language or one where you have to deal with six cases for each noun...]

Anyway, Ian is completely earnest in his intention to become an astronaut. When the occasional adult casually asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he invariably answers "An astronaut," without hesitation, and the adult in question always reacts with the proper wistful sentimentality, no doubt remembering our own NASA-rich youths in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

And Daniel just as intensely wants to be a diver, or more correctly, wants to be Diver. "Diver" is a paradigm that has effectively replaced superheroes and Wiggles - and even storm troopers - in his inner life. The inspiration seems to come from playmobil figures - you know, those politically correct, abstract little plastic composite pieces from Sweden. He loves to put them together, take them apart, float them in the bathroom sink for 12 to 24 hours at a time, and about all the wonderful things tat divers do and see. He loves the ocean, on the one hand, and all of its mystery of seascape and animals, and also he loves pirates, and understands that divers sometimes get to go into sunken ships, where, of course, one finds treasures such as jewelry, gold and frankincense. [Yes, we sometimes conflate our associations...] He has asked me a few times in the past week whether there are many sunken ships in the ocean, to which I can honestly answer, "Yes - probably." And he talks about the adventures of "Diver" as he once recounted and expanded on the exploits of Batman, Superman, and Spiderman. Of course, I'm very, very happy to see this somewhat abstract but adventurous, curious, industrious, socially-innocuous, quasi-superhero take the place of the Kafkaesque Spiderman and the throaty, creepy "Dark Vader," among others.

But I never imagined that their careers would intersect. Yet tonight, as we were watching an Apollo 11 movie (involving astronauts arriving in a capsule in the ocean), Ian told me of Daniels cooperative vision for a collaborative career with his astronaut brother:

"Daniel says he wants to be one of the divers that comes to look for me when I land."

I haven't heard of divers being involved in space flight landings since the advent of the Space Shuttle, but still, I hope for both of them that they can realize this wonderful vision, or something like it.

(February 5, 2011)