(With kids back to school this week, here’s a throwback to our homeschooling days with our three little spacemen.)

            This week in our house, we’re discovering the final frontier. No, I’m not talking about the dust-bunny village under my bed or the dark recesses of the furnace room, although both are rather scary places. The kids have been learning all about outer space and not just because we are threatening to send them there.

            This expedition was kicked off by a simple bedroom renovation. Maybe we were being doting parents or maybe we didn’t know what we were really getting into (most assuredly the latter), but a couple of months ago we decided to create a spaceship themed room for the three boys. With a little manipulation, we were able to steer the brothers in this direction and even make them think it was their idea, since their suggestion of a castle bedroom with full-sized knight in shining armor daunted me just a little more than stenciling a few portholes and planets on the freshly painted walls.

            And so, after a few days of studying the sun, stars and so on, I find I’m learning a lot more than I bargained for. After all, can there be a larger subject than the cosmos? Most of the speculation of how stars are “born” and black holes could be used to travel through time is where science fiction found its origin. No wonder George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry made so much money plumbing the subject that has no limit.

            Children don’t have the same difficulty with entertaining such notions as do skeptical adults. Their minds as wide as the universe itself, they dispute nothing and marvel at everything: that Venus is hotter than Mercury which is closer to the Sun; that Jupiter is 1400 times larger than the Earth (more impressive if demonstrated with appropriately sized paper circles) and that dogs and people have rocketed into oblivion on their own volition. (Well, maybe the dogs had to be convinced.)

            While reading about the characteristics of the Milky Way’s family, the boys entertained themselves by yelling “stupider than Jupiter” and then collapsing into mad giggles. I was thinking that the phrase was very apt for anyone who would volunteer to leave the nice safe atmosphere of Earth to live in a spaceship where you had to sleep seat-belted to your bed. (If there’s a time I appreciate gravity, it’s when I sleep.) But all giggles aside, the gray matter in the boys’ heads soaks all this stuff up, if maybe not the correct names for everything. At one point, Tim tried to tell to me that the largest planet was named Jerkury. I suspected that although this planet was yet undiscovered by Earthlings, it probably had sent more than a few “ambassadors” here and presented a good explanation as to where grouchy people really come from.

            Much to my surprise, I found myself one evening when my husband was away curled up in bed with the oversized Dorling Kindersley Guide to Space and smaller but just as interesting Everything You Wanted to Know about Johannes Kepler But Were Afraid to Ask. I was riveted to the bed (without a seatbelt) and the subject matter. Earlier that day while the boys were testing the theory of gravity by dropping dangerously heavy objects from the tops of chairs and spinning pails of water over their head to imitate centrifugal force, I was my most captive audience as I read aloud the story of Galileo and wept as he succumbed to the Inquisition by refuting his theories about the Earth revolving around the Sun instead of the then popular vice versa.

            While I wonder to myself how I could forget (or never have learned) such interesting stuff, my sudden fascination with the subject at hand is very comforting. After all, the idea of trying to teach your children everything is overwhelming. At any rate, what they don’t learn when they’re young, they can still look up when they’re 35.