A Glowing Review
Did the solar eclipse this past week live up to the hype? Yes, yes,YES! And more. I’ve seen partial eclipses, and our family went to the last total eclipse visible in this country seven years ago. What everybody says is true. There is nothing like totality. It boggles my mind, to think of our normally somewhat inconspicuous moon empowered enough to take on the sun. To completely cover the surface of our personal star. Our extended family met in Texas and held our collective breath as the day dawned with clouds rolling in. There was a large expanse of grassy lawn right outside our hotel and the hotel was filled to capacity. About an hour ahead of time we staked out a spot and stretched out on blankets. Where all those hotel people went, I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to watch in a group and get the collective “Oooooh” of a crowd, because besides our family, there were only six other people out there in that huge area. We waited. As starting time neared, the sky cleared, just as the dense forest fire smoke cleared before the one in central Oregon seven years ago. This time totality was four minutes, considerably longer. The sky got dark. The streetlights came on, Stars appeared. I put on my jacket. My eclipse glasses had been working fine but I suddenly couldn’t see a thing and I panicked. One of my sons reminded me that totality was the time to take off my glasses and see the corona. That’s when the magic happens. Totality evokes something primal, something surreal. I was completely awestruck and had to remember to breathe. My eyes filled with tears. The sun refused to submit and be completely overpowered. It sent out some pinkish orange solar flares along the bottom. After the four minutes of totality, the “diamond ring” appeared in the lower right hand corner, the place where the shadow had started. Then the brightness was overwhelming. The glasses came back on. The shadow started to recede slowly. My feeling of awe did not recede and will not, maybe ever.
Then, because we happened to be in Texas, we drove thirty miles to look at the house where we used to live, the place we called home for six years during the 1980’s. I should say, “the house where we used to live“, because all that’s there now is an empty lot. It’s a good thing we already knew from Google Earth photos that the house was gone. Otherwise, we’d have been traumatized. The pretty little cottage style house was built about 1905 and had been completely restored to its original charm by the owners before us. It had beautiful little paned windows across the front. They were my favorite part of the place. I didn’t even mind washing them. There was an impressive pecan tree that emerged dramatically through a large hole in a redwood deck at the back of the house. The house sat on a quiet tree-lined street adjoining the Texas Woman’s University campus in Denton. A lot of bamboo has taken over a large part of the lot. The only thing left was the pecan tree. That, and a whole bunch of memories. Despite all my internet searching, I wasn’t able to find out what happened to the place. We decided there was only one explanation: It was raptured.
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
