Sputnik floats

by Paul Kandarian

I was born in October 1953 and four Octobers later, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into space, called Sputnik, the success of which triggered the great space race between the Soviets and the Americans, a high-flying component of the Cold War that had an entire generation of kids hunkering under our desks brainwashed into believing we’d survive a nuclear holocaust under a flimsy blanket of thin wood, lightweight chromed steel and hopeful government propaganda.

It was within that time I realized that I had two of the best grandfathers a boy could have, and one of them was my Nonno, a first-generation Italian, a Bronx street kid who came to Rhode Island as a teen and got doused with mustard gas as a horse soldier in The Great War. When I came along, Nonno, with his beaming smile beneath his smooth bald head, nicknamed me Sputnik, for no other apparent reason that it is a pretty good name and maybe he deemed me a pretty good kid. “Hey, Sputnik!” the tall, angular man would laugh from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, rubbing my head vigorously, eyes twinkling. I had a great summer this year, not for any one milestone-style event, but for many glorious little ones, and that’s the foundation of a grateful life: finding those moments, reveling in them, stacking them up like cordwood in your memory banks to burn when you need the warmth of them. At the end of many a day, I’d just sit and look out on the ocean from whence we came billions of years ago and feel the embrace of nature in every pore. Those moments, basking in the sun’s setting rays, listening to the eternal sound of water slapping sand, the sweet wind bending sea grass in a golden shimmer, were some of the most relaxing moments of my life. And some of the best were spent floating.

You see, I never could float that well as a kid or adult for some reason, perhaps my technique was flawed, my posture, whatever. But I recall my mom telling me about my Nonno floating on his back in the ocean when she was a kid on a Rhode Island beach and how much she marveled at the ease of which he floated in his long-sleeve, mid-thigh, presumably uncomfortable swimming attire of the more modest early 20th century, his long fingers entwined behind his head, smiling, looking for all the world like a man relaxing in a hammock as he bobbed in the waves. I could never do that. I tried every so often, flailing like a seal attacked by a shark, swallowing water, sinking, quitting, figuring I just wasn’t good at it. Nonno was a lifelong, hard-core smoker in the days when second-hand smoke wasn’t as decried as

it rightfully is now. He was widowed when I was a boy, and every Sunday would come over for dinner, puffing away and filling a wonderful old pedestal-style, ornately carved amber glass ashtray with the crushed butts of countless non-filter Camels, the living room a gray cloud of smoke. And this summer, as I finally floated on my back as easily as I imagined my Nonno did, I would think of him, my arms at first at my sides for balance then slowly putting my hands behind my head like he would do. And this one summer day, the last we would spend on this particular beach of this particularly glorious summer, I looked up into the wispy clouds and was reminded of Nonno again, his smoke billowing like a cloud around him, and his great hacking cough when he’d hear something funny and laugh deeply, the bellowing roar cut short by an emphysemic lung rattle that eventually claimed his life when I was 25 and he was 79. And looking up into those smoky clouds that summer day thinking of him, I smiled and swore I heard him laugh around that great hacking cough, “Atta boy, Sputnik. I knew you could do it.” I knew it, too, Nonno. Miss you to this day and thank you for inspiring me to be a pretty good Nonno myself.

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