Recently, there was a pretty big event that took place over our heads. Despite my enthusiasm for an obstruction of the sun on a cloudy day in northeast Ohio, I wasn’t sure how the animals would react.
Like most things in my life, I’m a little off. It was a sleepless night, like most, where I tossed and turned and then began scrolling headlines on my wife’s phone.
Honestly, I’m not that much of an astronomer. I took a few courses in physics while in college, trying to avoid some of the more difficult subjects, like math.
I remember seeing some eclipse when I was a kid. But mostly just remember getting yelled at for staring at the sun.
The eclipse was a pivotal moment for me because I learned that my eyes really did hurt after staring at the sun.
When I saw that our school district, where the youngest of our four children go, wasn’t on the list of canceled attendance, I became frustrated. How could they deprive my youngest children of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? The older ones are homeschooled, so they weren’t going to miss it, but the youngest … I was devastated.
Armed with the information that I read in the middle of the night, I took action. I immediately told my wife that we were taking them out of school. She didn’t like my enthusiasm, or the fact that I woke her up to share the great news.
I reassured her that this should be a big celebration for the homestead, the family and our community. It only seemed fitting to fire up the grill, cook some hamburgers and hot dogs and make it a picnic. While she did agree, she suggested that I wait until the sun comes out to have this conversation.
I lit the grill, cooked hot dogs and hamburgers. I told my kids the same thing my elementary teacher told me: Don’t stare at the sun! But since I don’t have any other way to watch it, I’m going to look right at it, with my safety squints.
I stared at that sun, an hour or more in total. It seems pretty silly at this point since I took the kids out and gathered them around the backyard to watch a solar let down. It was nothing.
At one point, an hour past the totality timeline, I just saw a low-lying February sun. I remember telling my kids, “I thought it would be a lot darker” while a dark cloud temporarily obstructed the view of the sun.
Personally, I don’t even know how NASA can calculate when and where an eclipse is happening. I struggle to track down overdraft charges from my bank. But regardless, I was a little disappointed, to say the least.
That’s when I went back to reread the article. Apparently, while I read in the middle of the night, I must have missed some of the finer details, like which month the eclipse would take place. Although I was a couple of months early to watch the eclipse, I was ready for it in April.
