Felgercarb!

Watched the begin­ning of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca last night.

Some­times, unex­pect­ed stuff trig­gers me. Last night was an exam­ple of this. I was all excit­ed to reex­pe­ri­ence this series, which was one of my favorites when I was nine. it does­n’t seem to get much rerun play, even with the Sci-Fi chan­nel remake that came out late last year. So when the open­ing cred­its start­ed to roll, I felt a lit­tle chill. And the open­ing mono­logue, “there are those who believe…” racked me head to toe with goosebumps.

But as the show start­ed to unfold, I real­ized that while I knew the sto­ry almost by heart, I remem­bered that I’d nev­er before seen what I was watch­ing. I read the nov­el­iza­tions, and I read the com­ic book, but I nev­er saw the pilot episode of Bat­tlestar Galactica.

I remem­ber very clear­ly the night that the pilot aired. It was the night that my moth­er drove me from my child­hood home in Spring­field, Ver­mont to what would become my new home in New Haven, Con­necti­cut. I did­n’t want to go. I did­n’t have the emo­tion­al tools to blame my moth­er, or even my father, for this, but my world was being torn apart.

My father and I watched Star Trek togeth­er. Sci-fi TV was our father-son bond­ing expe­ri­ence. But Star Trek was­n’t on, and by eight years old I’d seen every episode, and most of them more than once. So a new series about a big ship in space was some­thing that I want­ed to see with him. I could­n’t artic­u­late that at the time, of course. I did­n’t under­stand the dynam­ic. I’m very sus­pi­cious of ana­lyz­ing caus­es that have to do with “things I could­n’t under­stand at the time” because so often it’s just a way of attach­ing a sto­ry to events after the fact. But I don’t think I need­ed to under­stand it. Watch­ing sci-fi on TV with my dad was a part of my life that effec­tive­ly end­ed the night that my moth­er put me in a car and took me to New Haven. It was the way that my father’s absence made itself imme­di­ate­ly known.

I even remem­ber a let­ter that my father wrote to me around that time where he wrote that he would watch it at the same time and that it would be almost like watch­ing it togeth­er. Yeah, corny, what­ev­er. These are my child­hood mem­o­ries, so shut up.

I do remem­ber being mad at my moth­er that night because she told me that we’d be in New Haven in time for me to watch this new TV show, and in point of fact we were dri­ving through Hart­ford as the show was end­ing. There was­n’t even a hint of a chance that I’d see that show, and it struck me like adding insult to injury. Not only was I going to have to live in some strange new place, I was­n’t even going to get my promised TV show.

In those days there weren’t VCRs. Or if there were, only rich peo­ple had them. I don’t think I even had lived in a place with a col­or TV until we got to New Haven. I think my father had an RGB CRT for his com­put­er before he ever had a col­or TV. I could be wrong about that and it’s a mean­ing­less digres­sion. Because the Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca pre­miere was a dou­ble- or triple-length fea­ture, it got rerun only rarely, if at all. And I nev­er saw the pilot.

Until last night.

So much of this is emblem­at­ic of the issues I’ve been deal­ing with for the last quar­ter-cen­tu­ry. There’s all the obvi­ous aban­don­ment stuff in there, and peo­ple let­ting me down… did I spend the next twen­ty-five years get­ting my revenge by let­ting them down? Oh yes, yes I did. But there’s so much more. More about root­less­ness and not hav­ing a home. About being late and not believ­ing that there is enough time. About being a “good boy” and not being sad about the atom­ic fam­i­ly going fissive.

And now, it’s so much lat­er. So many years have gone past, and what can I do about it now? I don’t know. I can go on and on about “par­ent­ing myself” and all that stuff; clear­ly I need to move on from these modes that were ingrained in me, but what does that actu­al­ly mean anyway?

I don’t know, except that I can watch Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca on DVD. If not hav­ing seen it is sym­bol­ic of all this crap from my child­hood, maybe watch­ing it can be emblem­at­ic of recov­ery. Even if the only way it has any mean­ing is if I impose that mean­ing, well, so be it.

It’s too bad I live all the way over here in Cal­i­for­nia. I’d kind of like to invite my dad over for din­ner and to watch these DVDs.