The Woman Who Fell to Earth

Who do you love?
In Northern Italy, a short distance from Romeo & Juliet’s Verona, they have unearthed what they believe to be – or very much want to believe, to be, undying love.
In a grave, in the cold earth, they have found two skeletons that appear to be embracing: that they believe to have been locked in each others’ arms for five thousand years.
But they have to run a few tests, to be sure.
When pressed they admit they are not yet completely confident that the bones they have found, are of a man and a woman.
When not pressed their eyes shine as they describe the lovers.
The stories of the discovery give short shrift to the observation – usually buried far down on the page in the accounts that I have read, that ‘he’ has an arrow or two sticking into his back, and ‘she’ an arrowhead, lodged in her hip.
Yet still, somehow, for some irrational reason, the archaeologists believe this to be a couple, embracing – and not evidence of a primitive divorce.
I suppose archaeologists are, at heart, romantics.
They are, to be specific, people who have given their lives to a science – of sorts, that presupposes there is something of value to be found in what the world has chosen to discard, or nature swallowed whole. They believe that they can find, in a sense, meaning – simply by digging in the dirt.
They really believe they can see, in this tangle of bones, evidence of love.
Funny isn’t it, how love is easier to see in the past, or the future, than it is in the present.
Perhaps the distance in time allows us to make of these two piles of bones, what we will.
We cannot easily be envious of bones without flesh.
We cannot be angry at the unknown dead.
So instead we make lovers, fashioning them with the same sweet wistfulness that a child uses to sculpt a snowman, or a sandcastle, or a mud pie: with the same hopefulness with which a son or daughter presents their latest masterpiece for placement on the refrigerator door.
Here and now though, above ground, in our maturity, we are at best pragmatic when it comes to judging others.
Here in the 21st Century, we are not nearly as forgiving to those around us, who find themselves in difficulty.
In this here and now, the discovery of bones is at first, a crime scene, and the cry that goes out is not the sigh of love but, rather, the grating squeal of anger too long suppressed.
Here all missteps seem to fall into the category of crime and punishment – not necessarily in that order.
Here, at almost at the same time that these ancient lovers are being unearthed, we have the pitiful story of The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
Hers is a love story too, though, isn’t it? After all, what is it that could drive someone forward from childhood, despite all of the obstacles, toward the almost impossible goal of becoming a female astronaut, but love?
Maybe not romantic love, but love nonetheless: of the sky, of the stars, of reaching out to the heavens. And of course such a love was doomed to end in tragedy because, despite everything we have learned we will never learn to fly, on our own.
We begin life on the ground, and then instinct urges us forward, onto our feet and then, into the air.
What separates us is how high we can learn to jump.
What we all have in common is, the fall that must eventually come.
I don’t think you would argue that she had a greater distance to fall than most of us.
There are only so many ships to the stars, and only so many seats on those ships, and so many others waiting for their turn.
The heights that she strove for were finally achieved, but then what?
It is the old story of the aging athlete, or the has-been actor, or the strung-out musician, though the story is almost always about a man.
So why is there so little sympathy for her?
Instead the talking heads on television and radio – and their new cohorts on the blogs, sling arrows at this poor woman.
Instead of asking how this could have happened to her, we seem to be asking how this could have happened to us: we are insulted by her failure.
It seems unimaginable that she could have sunk so low, after flying so high.
There must be something wrong with NASA’s screening system, the pundits proclaim.
The only problem I see is that she was human.
I can imagine myself in her place.
Sure laugh, and say, ‘oh, so you wear diapers too when you go out to stalk someone’.
Go on, get it out of your system.
Get it out of your system and then try and imagine too – it’s not difficult, how you would fare if all that you had lived for suddenly evaporated – like early morning fog, and you stumbled and found yourself in a spiritual grave, alone.
Chilled to the bone.
Would you panic?
Would you grasp at any chance of escaping that pit, take any hand offered?
Who do you see in that pit, in that Italian grave?
What do you see in the shape of those bones?
Why can we find love in the dirt, and yet find it so difficult to shed a tear for a real, live woman?
Who do you love?
What will they say about your bones, in 5000 years?