Eclipse

 

At a small graveyard in Sherman our family perched along a ridgeline, gazing at the mountain where the sun first touches our country each morning. Dirigo, says our state motto, “We lead.” But the eclipse was traveling in reverse from the sun, rising over the Pacific in Mexico and reaching us in Maine at the tail of its arc.  Mount Katahdin stood like a stately white-haired elder bearing witness before us, with the staggered gravestones at our back serving as its solemn court. The long line of the mountain’s backbone and its “knife edge” were sacred to me for my own reasons; two young lovers who would later become my husband and me had clambered across that stony dragon-back, returning two decades later to repeat the adventure with our children. Both times my father-in-law was with us. He had hiked it every year for so many years, usually on his own. He gazed across the glacier-chiseled marshland in his leather hat, with hair as white as the mountain’s snowy peak, remembering the paths his feet had followed like a slowly repeated prayer.

The curling husk-tips of last year’s wild grass, dry and long empty of seed heads, prickled our undersides as we found our own places along the ridge and brought out our glasses. The lenses looked too dark to see through, but when we held them up to our eyes, they blocked out all light except for the sun itself. The sun was a dully glowing orb surrounded by blackness, and the moon was part of this darkness as it swallowed a larger and larger bite of the yellow sun-pie. The sky’s blue slowly deepened as the moon advanced. Without glasses, the sun still looked bright and whole, but when we put them back on we could see that only a fingernail sliver was left.

Then the sliver was gone, and our glasses went dark. We removed them from our faces as the earth suddenly chilled and a cold wind crept across the ridgeline. We looked up into an eerie black hole where the sun had been, a wispy white corona flaring around it. I lifted my camera to take pictures, but the camera diminished and simplified the image. Now the sky filled with shadow and a star-bright planet appeared beneath the sun. The mountains, which had been bright white before in a field of light blue, sunk into a dark silhouette with a golden sunset lighting up behind them. “The sun looks like an eye,” people on the ridge exclaimed. But it felt like a heart: the great big burning heart of our existence. A hush of awe fell over the ridge. It was so quiet the earth seemed to hum. The moment felt more sacred than I had expected as the great heart pulsed overhead. The sun was making its power known. If we had not known it from the daily rhythm of day and night we would know it now, in the way even its passing absence darkened our world. I could not see the faces of my family members at a distance. The darkness felt eerie and smoky, not an ordinary nighttime dark. The edges of the earth were still light – not just where the sun would normally set, but in every direction around the horizon.

“It’s coming back, put your glasses back on!” someone warned. We did as they suggested, even though the sun still looked like a wide-open portal. When we did, we could see the tiniest sliver of light appearing where the moon had first started nibbling at the orb. The sky lightened more and more. People began moving and talking again, but much more quietly than they had before.  We had been shaken, and no one knew what to say. A little longer and the sky was back to light blue. The mountains reappeared like white molars across the horizon’s broad grin. Sun shone again on the gravestones. Cars choked to life and eased out onto the rural highway, heading home.

We joined our family for dinner before our long drive back home. Mémé made an army-sized quantity of paella to feed her flock of visitors, and the bright color and taste of saffron paid homage to the sun. Children and dogs scampered underfoot. Having just returned from my grandfather's memorial the day before, life was feeling transient and I wondered how many turns around the sun we still had to enjoy the cooking and conversations that took place in this great kitchen. If the world can turn so dark and cold from a passing shadow, blotting out so much of what we can see even with light all around, what other, longer shadows might pass over us? I have known some of them, and each time the sunshine returned I chided myself for having lost a measure of faith that it would. But I will not forget the way the sun felt on this day, hanging before us in the sky, a great presence that continued pulsing with energy even when we could only see the glow of its edges. It still gathered us to it and centered us. That is what I will do then, I thought to myself. When I am next in shadow, I will stop trying to look for a sun I can’t see. I will close my eyes and just feel that it’s there, holding us all as we spin through the dark together.

Fleeting

My last grandparent passed a few weeks ago, just shy of his 97th birthday. He was the last member of our family from the “great” generation – those who endured the depression and WWII, then helped rebuild our country. My grandfather’s contribution to that effort, his “brick in the wall,”  floated high above the earth in the form of the many satellites he helped design. In his hours off work he traversed the Earth’s surface, hiking, biking and sailing. This made both his body and his mind so strong that even when he was ready to tap out of life, his body wouldn’t oblige. The night before he died he marveled to my mother, “I can still walk!” He passed away the next morning at his desk while reading the Economist. It is unknown which of the three articles open on the table was the exact cause of his demise.

After the end of his early marriage to my grandmother, my grandfather built a condo near the beach in LA and lived for decades as a quiet bachelor. He didn’t just commission his condo but did most of the actual building, along with nearly all the furniture inside it. He was modest and hard-working.  Romantic love mostly eluded him. But he was steady as the sun in showing up for his family. When our family was living in the middle of Amboseli National Park in Kenya, he came to visit. On a regular basis, deep into his 80s, he drove the 10 hours from LA to Portland Oregon to visit his son’s family. He called his mother faithfully every week of her life. My cousins and I loved visiting Grandpa and staying with him, not only because he was conveniently located right near the Los Angeles airport, but because he was a sweet, steady presence who liked exploring and always had something interesting to say. He was conservative by nature, but enjoyed reading books that informed and expanded his thinking. The Desiderata hung over his dining room table and he seemed to have absorbed its every word, living out his life in a way that was grace-ful; full of grace. 

It was my grandfather who introduced me to hike-in camping with a trip up into the hills near Julian. I remember walking with him for miles on a dusty trail through hills rippling with long golden grass, clusters of sage roasting in the sun, and dark green scrub oak and peeling Manzanitas dotting the hills.  We spoke, but most of our time together was peaceful and quiet, simply enjoying our presence together among the rustle of grasses and birds and the fall of our steady footsteps. 

One of the last times I visited my grandfather in LA, he was in his early 90s and still driving and shopping for himself. He had only in recent years made the concession to stop biking, after recovering from being hit by a car. We went out to a BBQ joint and shared a drink, laughing and talking like two young folks out on the town. The next visit, though, was a bit more sober. He’d had a couple of falls in his home and was forced to start considering his next move. Together, we measured his furniture and picked up boxes at the UHaul. He moved across the country into my parents’ home just one month before Covid struck. 

Grandpa’s decline was gradual. He fell more often and was more forgetful, but up until his last day he still looked out from the windows of his bright eyes and asked brilliant questions. Sometimes, we would answer his question, only to have him ask it again a few minutes later with the same degree of curiosity. When we bought a Tesla he was thrilled to be taken for a ride. “I’ve never gotten to ride in an electric car!” He exclaimed. By the next visit, it was all new again, and he had another first-time experience of riding in an electric car.  On one ride, we drove up the East side of Cayuga lake. Late September sun sparkled on the water as trucks cleared the stubble of dry corn stalks from fields. Grandpa was aware that he could not remember things. “I remember the earliest things, and the most recent ones, but not the things in between,” he explained. He was relishing a maple donut we had picked up in a drive-through, the sort of treat he lived for but did not have access to in his new nursing care ward. “I guess you probably won’t remember this drive,” I suggested. “No,” he agreed. Then his face suddenly brightened, and for a moment he looked like he was about 5. “But I’ll remember this donut!” Later, on the way home, I placed my hand over his and held it. The car felt suspended in the hazy, golden light of the sun hanging low over the southern horizon as we drove towards it. “I guess all we have is this moment,” I said. “But, that’s all we really ever have.” He nodded in acceptance, and then echoed my words: “That’s all we have.” That day with my grandfather imprinted in my heart what it felt to be fully present in a moment without being able to – or needing to - attach anything else to it.  Later, he forgot both the drive and the donut, passing the memory along for me to hold on my own until the dry stalks of my memories are also cleared from the field. But it’s ok, because for that one moment we were both completely there, with our hearts beating and our minds understanding, together.

As for man, his days are as grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more.

I will miss you, Grandpa. May your soul rest peaceful in golden fields.