1991

I remember standing in a small field on Kauai, thick kelly green blades of grass underfoot. The square glasses, opaque cellophane-like lenses didn’t seem to do much at all. I was told to look up, face skyward. My older teenage brother had built a box, a contraption that revealed a projection of the eclipse. It was all underwhelming, the tiny crescent in the sky, projected on the cardboard. I remember thinking, ungraciously: This is it? I don’t remember it getting cold or dark or being moved in any significant way. After the novelty of the moment wore off, I wanted to get on with it, proceed with our vacation day. Head to the pool, play at the beach. I had only a vague concept of what I was looking at, looking for. 

2017

He starts to cry as the temperature drops. I want to take it all in, but he’s a heap on the wet grass, weeping beneath his paper solar eclipse glasses stapled to the back of a child’s tiger face mask. Why does the sun have to disappear? Why does it have to happen only today? He wants to ride his bike around the perimeter of the park but Dad says let’s wait until after 10:20 a.m., the point of maximal partial eclipse, 92% in these parts. He collapses into the whimpering mess of a typical three-year-old: unpredictable, unintelligible wailing. 

We begin to feel a chill, our friends put on sweatshirts. I’m unprepared and goosebumps emerge on my bare arms. There’s a festive feel, the large field peppered with strangers in lawn chairs, blankets splayed out with picnic foods, cardboard contraptions and eclipse glasses at the ready. My son is hugging his knees, sitting on the gravel path. His wails drown out the crowd, focused skyward, as they start cheering. 

I’m anxious about my one year old, afraid she’ll gaze directly at the sun. All faces turned upward, leering at the spectacle. She’ll follow suit. But I have to attend to my three-year-old, whimpering about the sun, the moon, a desperation in misunderstanding. I think about the historic panic about such an event: the sun disappearing momentarily. Of course it would feel like an omen, a harbinger of doom. He’s channeling that historic angst, knowing that the sky darkening midmorning is unnatural, feels off. 

I crouch beside him, rubbing his back, trying to convince him it’s all right. I can’t tell if he’s upset because the sun is disappearing or because I can’t keep the eclipse from remaining for another day so he can see it tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. It’s the illogic of a three-year-old tantrum. 

The air seems filtered, a hazy Instagram “Nashville” tainting the late summer morning. Time speeds up and suspends, as if the eclipse causes a filtering of moments, a sifting of time. As if heavenly bodies aligning requires all to pause ceremoniously, a recognition of our minisculeness. And yet nothing waits for the three-year-old angst. He rocks in my arms until the typical light returns and all is as it should be again.