Moon Landings And Mold: The Secret To Raising A Curious Child

When I was growing up in Dallas, Texas, there was only one activity that could get me, my mom and dad, and my three siblings to stop going in six different directions and all pay attention to the same thing. It wasn’t celebrating holidays. It wasn’t watching Dallas Cowboys games. It was any time one of the kids had to do a science experiment for school.

My dad is an engineer — he worked for NASA — but my mom was the ringleader. I remember when the two of us tried to grow jars of mold in my closet. She liked to check our progress every day. Another time, my dad dismantled the fireplace, so we could put rods made of various metals into the fire and see how long it took them to conduct heat. (In retrospect, maybe this wasn’t the safest idea.) Some of my earliest memories are being packed into the car in my jammies in the middle of the night to watch the Apollo launches at a family friend’s house. Sure, my dad had worked on the project, but this was something our family did because we believed in exploration, whether we were exploring the surface of the moon or a jar of mold.

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