I found a small open park near the water tower, spread my towel across the grass, pushed off my shoes and sat barefoot on the ground. I wasn’t alone — it was me on that stretch of grass along with a number of people who also picked this place to watch the eclipse. People whooped and cheered and clapped and roared when the sun and moon and Earth aligned. There it was: Totality.
A little girl, about five years old, shouted to her mom that it was the best day ever and thanked her for bringing her to see this. I couldn’t help but turn around to make eye contact with the mom and flashed an expression of bursting heart eyes ready to fill with water and sparkles. They were three, a mom and her young son and daughter. The son had a blue-green cast on his arm and I wondered why. Years from now, I imagine those children recalling this memorable day with their mom.
At this place on Earth, it was cloudy, in that blotted gray sort of way. Everyone was here early. When the surroundings brightened, you could push on your paper glasses and faintly make out the moon and the sun juxtaposed in the shape of Pac-Man. Then the clouds concealed the show again.
I started to realize from their vantage point, the mom and her boy and girl could see the sun and moon reveal about a second before I could. One of the kids would squeal in delight: “I see it!” But I couldn’t see it and half wondered if they were declaring it in anticipation or in reality. Then “gleam!” there it was. It was like watching television on a delay — a strange real life latency period.
The thing about the clouds is they added an element of uncertainty. Will we see the big event? Or will it happen beyond the clouds? Will we get what we want? Or will we be denied?
Throughout the lead-up to the time of totality, there was an ebb and flow of anticipation and witnessing. It felt like a sort of friction. In the unknowing, there was a buildup of energy.
A group of young men somewhere behind me at about 45 degrees provided free entertainment. They were jovial, and two of the more audible ones reminded me of the light and the dark in all of us.
Totality was just moments away. Everyone had been there for at least an hour feeling the flood of adrenaline as the clouds collected then parted again and again.
Just before the moment we’d all been waiting for, the clouds started to close again like a curtain of doom.
The seated man shouted: “No! No! No! Don’t do this to us! No! Don’t do it!” His voice was full with earnest pleading and maybe a glint of humor. “Come on! No!”
Eyes fixated and hopeful, I was laughing now. Other people were too. Our collective energy had to go somewhere. Was he right?
The man's friend, who was standing face skyward, answered without looking. “There’s time! Have faith! You have to believe! There’s still time!” His message seemed to ricochet off the sun and moon and clouds before it hit his friend, and in the process all of us were reminded to keep faith too.
Just then the cloud curtain pulled back again and there was the diamond and the glistening, glorious show reminding us we are all one on this tiny little planet.
Time really did disappear. Everyone with a view of the eclipse was awash in awe. The earth turned a form of sepia and the old time street lamps flickered on. Night? A blackbird flew to the contortionist tree in front of me, casting an unusual shadow across the lawn. This all looked like a storybook. A dream. Is this all a dream?
In that moment, I imagined the world as in Powers of Ten, the film created by Ray and Charles Eames (https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/).
How tiny, how curious we must all look from out there, all these humans dotted around like Earth-bound constellations and star clusters wearing strange paper glasses and turning our faces to the sun. Like a field of sunflowers, humanity was united in a way, standing or sitting in awe of light and power and life.
Lifting their feet deliberately over the grass, the mother and her small kids were going home. As they passed by me, the mother said goodbye, (I’d taken a photo for them earlier) and the little girl turned around and looked at me, her hand still linked to her mom’s, and said, “I love the moon.”
Later I wondered, does she also love the sun? And how about the clouds?
Would the sun and the moon capture our imaginations in the same way, if not for some clouds?
*All photos are stock — not from the day of the eclipse*