The launch date has been set: July 16, 1969. That’s three weeks from yesterday.

I can barely sit still.

I’ve been keeping this notebook for twelve years. Sputnik in October 1957, when I went outside in my bathrobe and stared at an ordinary Ohio sky that suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else. Mercury. Gemini. The fire. The long wait. Apollo 7, 8, 9, 10 — each one closer, each one proving one more piece of the architecture.

July 16. Three weeks.

Betty is watching me live in a state of barely controlled excitement and is being remarkably patient about it. She asked last night if I was going to be like this for the next three weeks. I said probably yes. She said she figured that was the case and made a pot of tea.

Harold came over for dinner on Saturday and we talked about nothing but the mission for two hours while Edna and Betty talked about gardening and presumably felt some relief. Harold is not sentimental about space the way I am — he’s always been the practical one — but even Harold admitted that he’s going to be in front of the television on July 20 for the landing.

“If it works,” he said.

“It’ll work,” I said.

“You always say that,” he said.

“I’ve been right,” I said.

He admitted that I had, in fact, been right more often than not about the program’s milestones.

I’ve been tracking what I want to remember to write about. The first television images from the Moon’s surface — if they get them working. The words Armstrong will say when he steps down. The moment Aldrin follows. The planting of the flag. The geological collection. The lift-off. The rendezvous. The long coast home.

And the landing, before any of that. The powered descent. The twelve minutes. The program alarms or lack thereof. The moment the contact light illuminates and the engine shuts off and two Americans are standing on another world.

Three weeks. The most anticipated three weeks of my life.

I’m going to try to sleep. I don’t think it’ll work.