I watched Monday’s solar eclipse from my porch in Herriman. Because of the mob, I saw it in three two-second glimpses. It was anything but a special or even spiritual experience.
Surrounded by grandchildren, some of whom had misplaced their “special sunglasses” in the 12 hours since we bought them, we had to share our eyewear.
Sharing never goes as well as the fool who suggests it. Not surprising. If we can’t get world leaders to share, what chance do we have with excited children?
Anyway, I wasn’t too disappointed by the limited view. Special or even spiritual wonderments aren’t meant to be appreciated in the middle of a clamoring herd. Not by me, they’re not. I need quiet and solitude to reflect on the moment.
That’s why, when the day drew near, I made no plans to jump into the truck and drive to Idaho or Wyoming with a million other “eclipsers.” Barely glimpsing a 90 percent eclipse from my porch was good enough for me.
This is probably why I get along with Sonny. We agree that the best experiences involve distance and uninhabited space. Not only are they essential for the calm reflection we prefer, but fewer people will get killed if something in the reflection process goes wrong.
This is not, as Carly Simon sang in the ’70s, to say that flying “your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun” was vainglorious. Only that I wouldn’t have done it.
Lots of people probably had a “wow” moment standing shoulder to shoulder in a rented patch of an Idaho potato field, and it was worth the long, tiring 35 mph drive home. To each his own.
Almost none of my wow moments required hours of long and aggravating preparations. This includes the moment in April 1975 when my future wife answered a door in Holladay and caused the entire world to spin in the opposite direction.
The same is true when I got to hold our first baby and realized that I would never have that same experience again, and by that I don’t mean having another kid. I mean that life-altering and inescapable moment when I no longer could say, “I don’t have any kids.”
The best wow moments require almost no synchronicity and you know they will never happen again. It’s pretty wow to shoot a bowling ball through a car, but Sonny and I can do that as many times as we want — provided no one calls the cops.
My wife and I tried to ensure the grandkids had their wow moment. They’ll remember — most of them — what it felt like to watch the moon block most of the sunlight, how the temperature dropped, and screaming at their grandfather to not watch the eclipse with binoculars.
It was when the eclipse was almost over that I had my wow moment, a completely unexpected flash that I would never pass this way again. We finalize our move next week.
There will never be another time that I stand in my yard with my grandkids and watch weakened sunlight filter through the trees and leave moon shadows on the sidewalk in front of this house — on Moon Shadow Drive in Herriman.