Peace and Long Life

There's a really beautiful place on the side of a long, sloping hill, in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There's a flower garden and a creek and the forest leads right up to a little white house. Inside that house, a while ago, two children sat on the floor and watched Star Trek together in black and white on NBC--the first all color network. In the afternoons, the little girl and little boy would run outside and play Star Trek games. The little girl played all the parts except for one--Spock. The little boy always insisted on playing Spock. The little boy was my uncle and the little girl was my mother.

I didn't know anything about this until a few days ago when my mom mentioned that she and her brother watched Star Trek with intense devotion as children. I'd known that my mom liked Star Trek. She watched The Next Generation with me through my whole childhood. We cried together when "The Inner Light" aired and again during "All Good Things." But, I'd never realized how much the show meant to her and to her brother as kids.

"Spock was my favorite too," she said, "but Danny always wanted to be Spock so I played everyone else."

And, I get why Danny wanted so much to be Spock. Danny was deaf. He talked with his hands and, sometimes, so did Spock. My mom's little brother started at the North Carolina School for the Deaf when he was six years old, riding the bus by himself over an hour each way. But, before that, he and my mom had their own sign language. Their hands would flutter in silent, secret conversation and, amidst all of it was something very familiar. As they ran along the creek, observing alien life and beaming from planet to ship and back, they flashed one sign we all know, "Live long and prosper."