You can't take the sky from me.

When I was a kid, in 1970 or so, a team of astronauts came to our town and spoke at our high school. I wasn't even in high school yet, but they bussed students from all the schools over. If that auditorium hasn't changed since way back then, if I were to walk into it today, I could show you where I sat.

I was a girl, 11 years old, and had yet to discover Lord of the Rings (although that came not long after) and hadn't met my first boyfriend, the one who had me read the Dune trilogy.

But I remember so distinctly sitting there, while up on that stage a man said, "One day women will be astronauts, too. Maybe we'll call them astronettes." So politically incorrect today, but back then, to this girl, it sparked a dream. One day I would be an astronaut.

High school came, and although I loved math and science, I was a solid B. I knew I needed to be brilliant to follow my dream, and I was smart, but I wasn't brilliant. College never came to pass, instead I got married and a few years later had a son.

Divorce. Eventual re-marriage, a daughter and another son. One of my husbands, and I'm embarrassed to say I actually don't remember which one, knowing of my childhood dream, asked me once, "If you could go up in a spaceship right now, would you go?" This was at the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, so I tend to think it was my first husband. "Would you leave me and (our son) and go into space?"

Yes, of course I would. In a heartbeat. Dreams don't die.

Well, more years passed. I came to realize that even if I had been brilliant, I was not and had never been in the kind of physical shape you needed to be in to successfully train for space travel, even if the opportunity had even come my way.

So my dream died.

My dream may have died, but my interest never faded. I remember when the Challenger exploded. I cried. I watched every launch of the shuttles that I could. I called out sick to work once because there was a launch that morning.

Last fall, in my 58th year, I went to Disney World with my youngest son, who was now 20. When I realized how close Kennedy Space Center was to Disney, I asked him if he minded if we went there on our last day in Florida. He didn't, and so we did.

As we drove from Orlando to Cocoa Beach, I started shaking. My son asked if I was okay, and I told him the truth. I was more excited knowing I was going to Kennedy Space Center than I was to go to Disney World.

Kennedy Space Center is, at first, slightly underwhelming from what you expect. They have the Rocket Garden, and the NASA globe, and a space capsule.

( Yep, me with the crazy white hair. My son trying to look bored. )

The Rocket Garden.

The countries involved in the International Space Station.

But then you go on the bus tour.

We saw the SpaceX launch pad, and this building: the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) that the tour guide told us was the largest single story building in the world. The flag on the side of the building was, if I remember correctly, 21 stories tall. Right now it's being prepped to become a support building for the Space Launch System.

A random yet cool rocket thing.

Wish we could have seen more of the SpaceX stuff, but most of it was pretty distant from the bus windows.

The bus tour ends at the Apollo Saturn V Center.

Inside, you go into a room that looks exactly like the control center of the first manned space launch. In fact, IT IS THE CONTROL CENTER OF THE FIRST MANNED SPACE LAUNCH. Each piece of now outdated equipment was preserved and the room was rebuilt exactly as it was that day. You sit, you look, the lights go down. The computers come alive; the countdown begins; and you are there. The voices from the control room and the rocket; they synchronize the actual feed from television reporters (Walter Cronkite!) and all the footage from that momentous day, and it happens right in front of you.

EDIT: I've been called out, and I apologize. It was the excitement of finally making this post. FIRST MANNED AMERICAN SPACE FLIGHT. Absolutely no offense intended to the memory of Yuri Gagarin and the Russian space program!!

No lie, this was when I broke down and cried. And realized that dreams never do die, no matter how old you get; no matter how much arthritis you may have; no matter if your hair white and flyaway; no matter how non-brilliant you may be. Dreams don't die.

Then you go into another room. There, hanging above you, is the largest rocket ever flown, the Saturn V. You think you realize how big it is, and then you get past the first part to seen another part, and then another, and then another...well, it's huge. (I just saw in the picture that I chose to wear my "Star Wars 1977" t-shirt that day! I cropped most of me out...)

I don't even have half of it in the shot. It went on from one end of this gigantic room to the other.

They have an Astrovan, the van that would take the crew to the launch pad; the first lunar moon rover; a gallery that contains not only an Apollo spacecraft but Alan Shepard's spacesuit as well.

The astrovan. Who doesn't want their own astrovan?

The front pages from newspapers around the world on the day Neil 'Alien' Armstrong walked on the moon.

They have a moon rock you can touch. ( I touched it - it felt like a rock...)

Then you go into this gigantic, circular room. The walls are curved, the ceiling is curved. You stand in the middle and they play a video that SURROUNDS you. When it began wheeling and moving I had to grab someone's shoulder because I got dizzy.

They tell you a story that leads up to the space shuttle program, and the film ends with a dazzling, awe-inspiring stars-against-the-black-of-space view of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was incredible. I wish I had video or even a picture of it.

But even more incredible, you suddenly realize that the far wall, the wall in front of you, the wall that the vision of Atlantis is projected against, IS NO LONGER A WALL. It is merely a thin veil, and it rises and the vision of the space shuttle Atlantis is suddenly no longer a vision. It is actually there, and you've been looking at it the whole time.

IT WAS THE GREATEST FUCKING REVEAL I HAVE EVEN SEEN.

Inside they also had a "ride" that simulated a rocket launch, as testified by numerous video of real astronauts saying, "It's just like a real rocket launch!" They highly recommended people with heart conditions NOT to ride it. So, naturally, me with my heart condition FUCKING RODE IT. YOU BET YOUR ASS I DID.

The first shuttle launch.

President Bush.

President Reagan.

President Sagan.

After that we took the bus back to main visitor's center. They had some kind of show we could have seen, called Heroes and Legends - the Astronaut Hall of Fame. But it was about 90 degrees, and we had to get to South Carolina before nightfall, so we opted to skip it and left while our hearts were still full of the stars of the black.

Dreams don't die. No power in the verse can take the sky from me.

One day I will be an astronaut.