April 7, 2024

1:49 PM: With a start, I realize tomorrow is THE DAY and that we live in the ZONE OF TOTALITY. What’s going to happen, am I ready? I scramble around, pulling out hoarded eclipse paraphernalia. Counting 3 eclipse guides and 13 pairs of glasses gathered over the past year. Will we have enough?

2:42 PM: My daughter and I drive to the “There Goes the Sun” celebration at our local Bloomington, Indiana Switchyard city park and amphitheater. Traffic is light and I consider whether we have worried unnecessarily about eclipse crowds – some reports have suggested that 300 thousand people may descend on our town. A pop-up vendor is selling tie-dyes and eclipse t-shirts on the street corner. Why the tie-dyes?

3:04 PM: We enjoy the first strains of local son Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” played by the talented Bloomington, Indiana Symphony Orchestra, and accompanied by the Voices Novae choir. Catching the contagious feeling of camaraderie and expectation floating around the crowd, we sit on blankets, snack on dried fruit and watch children dance.

3:50 PM: Audience sing-along to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. The classic song was released in 1983 so most people born in the 1970’s or before appear to know the words by heart (personally, I am transported back to the fraught days of middle school dances). My daughter and her friends read the lyrics on a cell phone and the entire crowd sways in unison singing; 

“Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time (All of the time)

I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark…forever’s gonna start tonight.”

6:41 PM: Odd weather. Rain and sunshine in the front yard. Rain and dark clouds in the backyard. Reports of rainbows in the vicinity.

8:00 PM: We cancel plans to attend a friend’s neighborhood eclipse glow party at a park shelter due to approaching thunderstorms and return glow stick supplies to the garage. 

April 8, 2024

9:19 AM: We wake up with a feeling of anticipation, much like a birthday. My husband (infamous for retaining birthdays) informs me that today is Gary Carter (his all-time favorite baseball player)’s birthday. April 8 is also the birthday of a friend’s son, along with the birthday of the pastor of the church that houses the preschool where I work. Good signs all around.

10:21 AM: Pack eclipse picnic lunch: Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the kids and their friends who will be joining us, leftover Chinese noodles for the grown-ups, chips and salsa, orange slices, Newman’s O’s, sparkling water, and juice. 

11:34 AM: Pack wagon for the journey to the eclipse viewing party. 

12:10 PM: Depart for a ten-minute walk to a friend’s back garden patio, adjacent to a wide-open green space behind a mega-church (three services each Sunday). Here is where we plan to view the eclipse, on a gently sloping green lawn practically designed for the occasion. Pulling our packed wagon behind us we see people streaming into the church entrances and stopping at welcome tables. Is the church charging people to use their lawns, we wonder, or are they just giving out water? 

1: 22 PM: Our group of ten is assembling – my husband and our host (a close friend) our two children and their three friends. Two more friends arrive on their bikes—one is a scientist (a biologist). She knows stuff about nature! We eat lunch and excitedly chat with neighbors. The three 11-year-old boys run off to play basketball, promising to return in a half hour. The light already appears diffused, almost cinematic.

1:49 PM EST Partial Eclipse Begins. Anticipation is rising, crackling in the shiny air surrounding us. Everyone chooses glasses, noticing that some tear or bend easily, and others are uncomfortable and too large, especially for smaller heads. The type with one solid strip that looks like a viewfinder is surprisingly effective. We have more than enough glasses. Vaporous filmy clouds drift in front of the dimming sun, best viewed through a pink veil of weeping cherry blossoms.

2:22 PM: “USE YOUR GLASSES WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE SUN” we remind the kids, and occasionally the adults. The sun looks like a blob of egg whites with a small bite taken out of the lower right-hand corner. Where are the boys? 

2:44 PM: Someone gets out a strainer and we try various surfaces, finally landing on the adjoining neighbor’s smooth patio flagstones. Numerous tiny crescent moons appear on the sandstone below. The kind and friendly neighbor, who recently turned 80 and is recovering from major back surgery, gasps in amazement.

2:51 PM: We have left the patio and are now gathered on the wide-open lawn area, taking pictures, gazing at our changing surroundings, and talking in small groups. We are glued to the sun, our faces tilted up expectantly. The temperature has dropped, and the wind has picked up. It appears to be twilight and the birds are beginning to sing like they do at dusk. Energy seems to swirl around us, as palpable as electricity. Suddenly the boys run up, sweaty from basketball. “Did we miss it?” they ask breathlessly.

3:04 PM: Totality Begins. We have watched the bite in the sun grow bigger and bigger and suddenly, like a cap fitting neatly on top of a bottle, the sun is gone. We tear our glasses off our faces and gaze directly at the sun. Nighttime has descended and it is becoming as dark as when you stumble to the bathroom at 3 AM. The horizon glows in every direction as if a sunset is encircling the earth.

3:06 PM: Midpoint of Maximum Totality. Awe ripples across the lawn, embracing all of us with its fierce insistence. Gasps, screeches, and exclamations reverberate in all directions. Things that take me by surprise: complete darkness, tears streaming down my cheeks, the feeling of vulnerability in the face of a vast cosmos. All this in tandem with a sense of swelling love for my fellow exquisite humans. Below the eclipse, to the lower right Venus catches my eye, winking in the black dome of sky. Reaching out, I kiss my children and my husband and hug my friends, who are also crying. In my excitement, I attempt to take a video, which later turns out to be a shaky scene of dim grass at my feet. 

3:08 PM: Totality Ends. Marveling, we gasp as the warmth of the first uncovered sun rays begins to touch our arms and faces. The immense power of the sun has never been clearer to me. Without it, life as we know it is no more. Without the sun, without light, we exist in darkness. Beautiful darkness, but darkness, nonetheless. A knot of people mumbles in the distance, stooped over searching for dandelions that have closed in the darkness. “It’s like we’re in a movie,” remarks my son. 

4:22 PM: Partial Eclipse Ends. “We can use these glasses even when there’s no eclipse,” the kids remind us. Our necks are sore from stretching skyward. We are wrung out from the afternoon’s experience. Everything around us feels slightly different, transformed in some way. Humans, plants, and animals included (later my daughter coaxes a raccoon out of a tree in our neighbor’s yard — the animals were equally as discombobulated).

4:30 PM: Walking back to the patio, I try to articulate to myself the message embedded in the grand cosmic display we have just witnessed. This total eclipse occured in the middle of my life, but my children are still forming! I know they will remember this forever. How desperately this planet needed this experience at this moment in time. It is as if the universe was saying “Stick together humans, love each other in the face of the vastness of space. There are many forces you can’t control, but your survival IS within your reach. Love yourselves, love the past and the present and the NOW. Stand in awe of the universe.” 

At least that’s what I got.