Comfort in Space
Just finished Star Trek: Picard (ep. title: “The Last Generation”). I’m not crying, you’re crying. So, now for my homage post: Star Trek and the Newborn.
This family is full of some serious sci-fi nerds. We love Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, The Expanse, etc., and Jurassic Park is hands-down my favorite movie of all time. But I’m all up in my feels tonight because of Star Trek.
Flash back to December 2020: Orson is a newborn (and leading up to his birth, I’d been binging Star Trek). The clusterF that is cluster-feeding is absolutely destroying us. I didn’t know then what I know now, that colic is SOOO MUCH WORSE than those nights in the very beginning. I just knew that my baby boy was hungry again after just having fed him 2.5 nanoseconds ago. And news flash: resistance is futile.
Neither Nathan nor I had been getting hardly, if any, sleep (go figure), and there were only so many times that Nathan could take Orson down to our living room, play the Interstellar spinny space-station song while pacing in a circle, and let the sweet, screaming tot stare at the ceiling fan till he would calm. What is it with babies and ceiling fans?
Holding the Next Generation
We knew Nathan had some work he needed to get done before taking the holiday break off, so in an effort to let him get some rest, I started spending some nights cuddled up with my brand-new baby boy on the recliner couch watching (you guessed it): Star Trek.
He was born right at the tail-end of my watch through of the original series. I distinctly remember holding him in the crook of my arm, practically drooling on myself from fatigue, listening to that choral, over-the-top, 1960s intro music.
It wasn’t long after making those transitions down to the couch at night with Orson that we arrived at The Next Generation together.
Star Trek VS Star Wars
Don’t get me wrong. There’s that forever debate about Star Wars v. Star Trek, which is better? I love them both dearly, and they’re both special to me for so many reasons, but Star Trek just hits a different emotional wavelength for me.
You assimilate and acquire these deeply significant imprints on your psyche, the things that help you cope and survive when you’re in the crater of caca and the deepest doo-doo (figurative and literal doo-doo in the case of caring for a newborn).
It wasn’t just me and Orson in those dark, sleepy, infinitely long nights. I also had Picard, Riker, Data, the Enterprise crew, and even Q, keeping me company and keeping me sane. So to see such a moving finale to their journey tonight really stirs up some deep feelings for me. And I’m excited to one day, hopefully, impart the same love and appreciation for these series to my children.
“The sky is the limit”.
Engage.