Rocket Boys and Dreams

We were watching 'Rocket Boys' early this morning.

I see the hunger in the eyes of the young men to be more than their community can offer them and I wonder how the parents cannot see the dreams and visions of more that are in the minds of their boys.

When my son was playing baseball, he asked me a pretty tough question. He said, "Mom, do you think I am good enough to play in the majors?"

I am not naive enough to believe that a child asks those questions without a dream of something greater in mind.

With great care, I began to answer him. Having been blessed with parents who were conscious of the possibilities of the world that COULD be available with work, I told him, 'Bud, you can be ANYTHING you are willing to work to achieve. Anything. And if this is where your future leads you, then I'll support you all the way.'

He smiled contentedly and said, "I don't know if I'm good enough, but I thought I'd ask you."

I was thankful that a higher power than me had given me the answer.

Everyone wants their children to succeed and everyone wants their children to have opportunities that they didn't have. Sometimes, the realities of life, like for the Rocket Boys in Coalwood, encroach upon the possibilities of what could be supplanting it with the painful life choice of what MUST be.

When the circumstances of life dictate reality over dreams, reality usually wins out in convincing fashion. But in the process, a little bit of that individual dies. Even if, in the very recesses of their soul, a fragment of the shattered dream remains as a twinkling ember of desire that could spark the fires of imagination, the need to pay the bills and make the dinner and put the kids to bed keeps the spark only a tiny light drowned out by the halogen glare of daily life.

But sometimes, the hunger for more gnaws at the insides of a person until it must be set free to seek other ways to feed the desire. It is then that the courage to be more than circumstances would seem to allow can blossom into a raging fire of desire, hope and effort. This combination combines into a fuel more potent than any other and it can launch our dreams skyward, where truly, there is no limit except those imposed by self.

Recently, my baseball loving son decided that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of the astronauts and scientist who have launched their dreams and their hearts into space. He wants to become an aeronautical design engineer.

When he asked me the same question, but this time substituted the new dream that has supplanted the old, I knew what I had to say.

'Bud, you can be ANYTHING you put your mind to and that you are willing to work to achieve. And I'll support you all the way to the stars.'

In a voice that has now deepened and a resolve that has just recently come into focus in his eyes, he said, "I know, Mom, but I just had to ask."

Wherever he winds up working when he completes the education that he will need to become his dream, he will be the lucky one.

Instead of working for money, he will be working to fuel his dreams and ambitions. And everyone knows rocket fuel is a powerful motivator. Just look at where it took the Rocket Boys.