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The first moment it occurs to you that you have gotten attached to something that isn’t available everywhere can make you feel both somewhat provincial and impossibly fond. A surprise: The world is smaller than you thought. There are different ways of ordering a pop or a soda or a Coke, and yours is not the universal one. Now try this with the sun, just one more numbered star in a vast impersonal almanac of stars of equivalent size.
When it went away for those four minutes, it looked so impossibly, embarrassingly small. It was like the moment at the airport when you leave home for real, and you glance back at your parents and they are just two people in a crowd of other identically small people, older and smaller than you remembered. Oh, that’s just our neighborhood star. It looked big because it was so close.
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When my daughter was a baby, we would play peekaboo. Where did you go? When are you coming back? Don’t go too far. I love you. She plays it with me now. She is big enough already to know it’s a game, not to be genuinely surprised by my sudden return. Now she takes her turn hiding, and I wait for her to reveal herself, squealing with laughter.
The next time the sun goes away like this, we will both be too old for this game. Right now I am big to her. Big and, I hope, assumed, and visible at 6 a.m. The next time the sun goes away, my scale will be different. It’s one of those gaps of time across which it’s impossible to project yourself except in vows, an imprecise measurement of time at best. There are days when I don’t take any pictures of her because she is so very much everywhere, and then, in a few weeks, that particular child is irretrievable. I sing “You Are My Sunshine” to her, and she gravely corrects me when I sing the wrong lyrics. Right now, I see you, sunshine. I see you all the time.
For want of anything better, we began the afternoon’s festivities with the national anthem. Enough of us were gathered together on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch the total solar eclipse that it felt like the kind of gathering whose opening should be formally marked. Lacking any more planetary music, that was all we had on hand to mark it with.
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You need something to mark this personal, impersonal bigness and smallness. The sensation of seeing your name in the undifferentiated list of a telephone directory, or seeing your town on a globe, or waiting for the face of someone you love to emerge from a crowd and walk across a graduation stage. There are so many suns. That one is ours.
Where did you go? When are you coming back? Don’t go very far. I love you.
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I don’t know if you’re familiar with the sun. Large. Spherical, I am told, though it looks round to me, when I catch a glimpse of it. Gassy. Well, it turns out, it is just a star. It is just a star up there with millions and millions of other stars. From the right angle, the moon can eclipse it entirely.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this happen. I have, and a few million-odd others. Mostly it was a Monday like other Mondays, and then for a little under four minutes in Indianapolis — my spot in the path of totality — the sun disappeared and it was twilight. I was on the motor speedway, in the stands.
I spent most of the run-up to the eclipse waiting in a long line to get a sandwich. (This is also what I do at sports games; I find it helps the team. Whenever I get up to get a sandwich and stand in a long line, bang, something important to the team happens. It is my small contribution to the world of athletics.)
It’s hard to put into words, the sensation of realizing your favorite star may only be locally famous. In fact, all its fans are geographically confined to a specific region — a specific planet, even. All it takes is the moon in the wrong place and — poof.
The first moment it occurs to you that you have gotten attached to something that isn’t available everywhere can make you feel both somewhat provincial and impossibly fond. A surprise: The world is smaller than you thought. There are different ways of ordering a pop or a soda or a Coke, and yours is not the universal one. Now try this with the sun, just one more numbered star in a vast impersonal almanac of stars of equivalent size.
When it went away for those four minutes, it looked so impossibly, embarrassingly small. It was like the moment at the airport when you leave home for real, and you glance back at your parents and they are just two people in a crowd of other identically small people, older and smaller than you remembered. Oh, that’s just our neighborhood star. It looked big because it was so close.
When my daughter was a baby, we would play peekaboo. Where did you go? When are you coming back? Don’t go too far. I love you. She plays it with me now. She is big enough already to know it’s a game, not to be genuinely surprised by my sudden return. Now she takes her turn hiding, and I wait for her to reveal herself, squealing with laughter.
The next time the sun goes away like this, we will both be too old for this game. Right now I am big to her. Big and, I hope, assumed, and visible at 6 a.m. The next time the sun goes away, my scale will be different. It’s one of those gaps of time across which it’s impossible to project yourself except in vows, an imprecise measurement of time at best. There are days when I don’t take any pictures of her because she is so very much everywhere, and then, in a few weeks, that particular child is irretrievable. I sing “You Are My Sunshine” to her, and she gravely corrects me when I sing the wrong lyrics. Right now, I see you, sunshine. I see you all the time.
For want of anything better, we began the afternoon’s festivities with the national anthem. Enough of us were gathered together on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch the total solar eclipse that it felt like the kind of gathering whose opening should be formally marked. Lacking any more planetary music, that was all we had on hand to mark it with.
You need something to mark this personal, impersonal bigness and smallness. The sensation of seeing your name in the undifferentiated list of a telephone directory, or seeing your town on a globe, or waiting for the face of someone you love to emerge from a crowd and walk across a graduation stage. There are so many suns. That one is ours.
Where did you go? When are you coming back? Don’t go very far. I love you.
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