Oh the Totality!

As the excitement about the solar eclipse mounts, I think about another eclipse in a time long, long ago.

It may have been the solar eclipse of July 20, 1963. That was seen in the Washington, DC area that Saturday, late in the afternoon.

But not by me. I remember my mother pulling the curtains tightly shut in our rec room, and huddling the three of us on the sofa across from it, far from the danger of instant blindness that was right outside our window. I would have been 6; maybe my memory is faulty. Maybe I’m mixing it up with all the times we were forbidden to watch TV or do anything involving water during thunderstorms. Maybe I’m mixing it in with stories I heard later about people taking LSD, starting at the sun and going blind. But this is my memory: waiting it out in a room darkened not by the moon blocking the sun but by thick curtains.

Years later, in August 2017, I’m a grown-up, and there’s a partial eclipse where I’m vacationing in Maine, and somebody gives us a pair of solar eclipse glasses, and I’m standing on the street with my husband and sister-in-law and we’re taking turns passing the glasses to eachother and exclaiming “Oh, I see it!” This was called The Great American Eclipse, according to Wikipedia, and it’s the same one that our idiot of a president at the time decided to look at directly. It was all quite fleeting —it seemed to pass in just a moment— but it was gleeful. If a bit puzzling, as though perhaps other childhood fears had been turned inside out and suddenly black widow spiders were now delightful. When had they invented solar eclipse glasses? When had they made this into a party?

So when I heard about the one coming up April 8, I wanted to make the experience less fleeting. I wanted to make it spectacular — like Carly Simon You’re So Vain spectacular — and we made plans to go with friends to Montreal, which is in the path of the totality. But alas the plans fell through, and I was a bit glum about this until I discovered the Livingston, NJ schools are closing that day because the eclipse is going to be crossing through the skies of New Jersey and obscuring the sun about 90 percent, and they’re afraid some kids will look up at the sun on the way home from school and go blind.

But 90 percent! That’s a solid A minus! We can see the eclipse — with protective glasses of course —right from the top of parking deck of our nearby college. Less glamorous than a jaunt to Canada, but also less expensive.

Still, the fears of my mother and the Livingston school district form a bit of a penumbra around my excitement. My husband thinks it’s hilarious that the Livingston schools are closing, but now I’m worried that my grown daughter, who crisscrosses the city daily as part of her job, will forget that it’s the solar eclipse and accidentally look at the sun. And what about all those airplane pilots and truck drivers? Is everybody going to remember to order their solar eclipse glasses from Amazon? And speaking of those glasses, how do you know they’re not the fake kind?

And even if you get the right kind, can we really trust something made of cardboard to protect us from blindness? That’s just a joke. Sort of. I’ll be there—atop the parking deck—celebrating, with my special glasses and maybe a bottle of bubbly and certainly with a little bit of inherited apprehension. And that’s fine. Would I really be me without that little frisson of anxiety? After all, our ancients, including my mother, were terrified of the damn things.