This week we return to the era of beehive hairdos and shirt-waist dresses as we take a look at the Astronaut Wives’ Club by Lily Koppel.

Not all of us get to have a space cowboy for a husband, but whatever ways your own husband vexes you, I can offer three solutions right along with this book. They are:

1) Comparison

2) Comparison

3) Comparison

(Of course, this method can also make you feel worse. Get proper training before you use it.)

Perhaps you’d like to trade in for

1) a husband in a death-defying profession, that doesn’t always defy death

2) reporters from Life magazine hanging around your house, watching you do everything from chain-smoke through your husband’s space mission to clean out your coffee grounds

3) paychecks from NASA, who wants their men backed up by “perfect” marriages.

Let’s take these matters one at a time:

DEFYING DEATH:

I’m old enough to remember when we landed on the moon. I was a freckle-faced kid, staring into my dad’s U.S. News and World Report, studying up on all the ways the Apollo 11 mission could go wrong. Dying in space was a special kind of fearsome. It could happen real slow, with lots of time to think about your fate while you watch the oxygen meter drop. And wow, how alone you are out there in the dark.

Most of us have sent loved ones into the operating room and paced the floor, hoping the doctor would amputate the correct leg or what have you. Would you like to keep your stress and worry? Or trade it for the Astrowife version:

“She kept vigil in her kitchen, ears alert to the squawk box, eyes glued to the television, The sun still hadn’t fully come over Houston Christmas Eve morning at 6:30 a.m. when the TV in the den broadcast the first lunar telecast, the video from Frank’s camera surveying the bleak, pockmarked lunar terrain.”

Or:

“Susan only prayed that the engine would work and slow the spacecraft down so that it came into lunar orbit at the proper angle. She couldn’t bear the awful silence on the squawk box. Would they ricochet off the Moon’s gravity field and be lost forever in space, or crash into the Moon?”

LIVING IN THE PUBLIC EYE:

No doubt it’s quite a trip to board “the world’s biggest stick of dynamite” and boost yourself from plain old Earth to space.

It is equally radical to blast off from tight military paychecks and Quonset-hut living to gala balls where you meet anyone from Fred Astaire to the entire Supreme Court. Yep, what a ride! What a lot of reporters on your lawn. They peek through your windows. They come over for supper. They find out where you get your hair done and post themselves in the hairdryer across the aisle.

And now that you’ve been invited to tea with Jackie Kennedy, you need the right dress. I wouldn’t complain about shopping for better clothes, unless of course it promised to break my budget.

Then again, America was so enamored of its space heroes and their families that they offered every perk from five-star hotel rooms to dream homes.

So you’ll probably get that dress you need.

 

KEEPING IT PERFECT:

Your space cowboy is in training for his mission. It’s hard work and long hours. He won’t be home all week and, even then, his mind might still be out somewhere near Pluto. Your job is to protect him from all the homefront stress, to cook him a steak-and-eggs breakfast. If you can’t manage to keep things perfect, your guy won’t get picked for the next flight.

Is it any wonder the Astrowives built those dream homes right around the corner from each other so they could chain-smoke through their problems together?

====================

I’ve been hanging out with my personal Astrowife tribe this weekend, my sisters. One of them lives in a spiffy new condo.

13709917_10154383964102915_6460505643028162443_n

 

She let me take over her bright and well-laid-out kitchen to fix a couple favorite dishes.

If you’ve hung around this blog much, you’ve seen Cheesy Chicken Subs and Sweet ‘n Spicy Chicken before, but they are worth repeating.