Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 2

This week I needed to be honest with him. If Mum were here, she would encourage me. “It doesn’t matter what I think.” She’d say. “If you think it best for Aidan, then you do it, you’re his Mum.”
Monday we went to his old primary school. He told them to work as hard as he had. He opened the Aidan Jones Technology Centre.
As we were leaving he said to me; “What are the chances of them ever reaching space?”
“You did.” I replied.
“None of them will work as hard as I did.”
I said nothing. The “I” in that sentence bit into my bones.
Aidan got As right through primary school. When Aidan was seven, I took him to lecture by an astronaut. Aidan was mesmerized with his stories and pictures of earth from the orbiting space station. The astronaut had said; “I wasn’t the brightest student in my class, I just worked hard.”
In the winter evenings Aidan and I would go out on the back, concrete steps and look at the stars. He would rest his head of crazy, blond curls against me. I said he was lucky to live in New Zealand. We could see so many stars from our house, not like in those bright cities the astronauts captured in the pictures.
When he was twelve, I said there was a downside to living in New Zealand. Yes we could see so many stars with our clear skies but he was unlikely to become an astronaut. “Kiwis don’t go up in rockets”. That night we stayed out late looking up in silence at the winking stars and then he just gave me a hug and went inside.
At high school going to parent-teacher interviews was easy. Aidan most enjoyed physics and decided that would be his major at University. He soon lost me, he was delving deeper and deeper. He brought Katya home, she seemed to be able to keep up. I liked her, we would share a pot of lapsang souchong tea but soon I realized she was coming to chat with me. Aidan was back in his books. He was determined and addicted. I should have been pleased but his intensity was unnerving.