Midday Darkness

My fingers were sore from my tight grip on the pen. The clipboard balanced on my forearm was filled with blanks. They were blanks I needed to fill in to move forward. Simple blanks usually weren’t important, but these were the most important ones I’d filled in in my life. They would determine my career, my life. They would determine whether I’d get to do what I had always dreamed of…or not.

I double checked that my name—Stella Aster—was correct on the top of my paper and the date was also correct. Then I stared up at the sky, my trained eye skillfully avoiding the sun.

All I wanted to do was look up at that sky. I wanted to admire the beautiful dome of a universe above us with thousands of stars, planets, and mysteries for me to find and analyze. I wanted to observe and to show our little planet my observations. I wanted to be a part of something bigger, and the universe was definitely bigger. My dream was to be an astronomer.

  I had wanted this to be my career since I was little. I had been dragged out of bed late because my sister loved stars and our dad surprised her by taking us to see a meteor shower that I’d even forgotten the name of, what I was told at the time would be a “one-in-a-lifetime experience.” I was annoyed at having to sacrifice my sleep for my sister who was a total star geek from posters covering her walls to constant astronomy magazines in the mail. My dad knew that I wasn’t thrilled, but he bought me a cookie at a gas station close to the park we went to to view the meteor shower. Being a little kid, that mostly made up for it. We spread out our blanket in the grass of the park and mom coated some extra bug spray on us. Then my sister looked at the night sky. “There! I saw one!” She exclaimed, pointing and radiating with excitement. I looked up at the sky and time seemed to freeze. I was instantly mesmerized by the sheer amount of stars above us. I scrunched my little four-year-old eyes in concentration, staring at the heavens, waiting. Then I saw a little white star dart across the sky to meet its companion before disappearing into the mysterious darkness of the night sky. I still remembered sitting there on that blanket, smelling bug spray, holding my cookie, staring at the stars, my eyes really opening for the first time to the vast world above us. I knew from that magical moment that I wanted to spend my life immersed in that world, the one where I could admire the dazzling beauty of the night sky for my whole life.

I blinked up at the sky, then checked the watch on my wrist. Any second now, the moon would block the Earth from seeing the sun, and I had positioned myself at the perfect coordinates to view the total solar eclipse. All the students needed to write a paper about a celestial phenomenon we witnessed for our final project, complete with calculations and an in-depth scientific analysis of what was going on. I had my calculator, pen, paper, formulas, and eclipse glasses with me, ready to use. All I had to do was watch the moon do its thing and record everything about it that I could. I noticed some slippery sweat forming on my hands. This was my final project. I had to do this right, and I only had about five minutes to work with.

I reached into the cup-holder in the arm of my lounge chair and took out my eclipse glasses. I checked the watch again. The next minute had ticked by. Come on, eclipse!

     As if it heard my cry, the moon suddenly started to make its way in front of our star. I adjusted my glasses across my nose and sprang into action. My feverish gaze shifted from sky to watch to sky to clipboard. My hands worked nearly as fast as my brain—I scribbled with my slick pen and typed frantically on my calculator, recording and describing. I glanced up again. The moon was almost halfway across the sun. Every second counted! By then, a lot of the people at the park had stopped their activities and were looking up at the sky. To them, the eclipse was something really cool that was happening. To me, it was my future.

     I wrote and recorded some more, numbers clouding my head and descriptions flying across the page, filling in those daunting blanks. Observations, sciences behind it, how my location affects my viewing of the eclipse. Finally, after what seemed like forever and a few seconds all at once, the darkness of the moon closed off the Earth from the brightness of the brilliant sun. Night washed over the park and I checked the time again. The dim white numbers on my little watch told me it was 1:12 pm. I gave myself a second to glance at the other viewers in the park.

     I saw a couple admiring the darkness of the world around them in awe, a lot of people with phones out taking pictures and videos, and even a family with three dogs who had gone completely silent at that moment. My eyes came across a family with an energetic young girl pointing up at the sky and chattering with her parents. Another little girl, who looked younger and had white-blonde hair, sat with the family, and I assumed she was the excited girl’s sister. She wasn’t engaged with her family or in anything that was going on around her; she just sat, transfixed by the awe inspiring beauty of the eclipse. She stared up at the sky through her oversized eclipse glasses and just sat still. 

     The sight of her made the memory of my first meteor shower come rushing back. I remembered the feeling: just being captivated by the sky’s vastness, the dome seeming like it would protect me from everything I was afraid of. No cares at all, no worries, nothing being expected of me, just me and the universe above, the heavens being the most comforting thing I’d ever experienced. I longed to feel that again. 

     I let my clipboard slide out of its balanced position on my forearm and let my pen slip out of my hand to meet the lush grass below us. I stared up at the sky and just stared. I would worry about the calculations and the paper later, sure I wouldn’t forget a second of this surreal moment in time. I sat in the park, remembering that the sky I gazed up at as a child holding the cookie is the same sky I gazed at today. A strong feeling of peacefulness was not what I had expected to feel today, but it came upon me like the sun’s bright rays. I basked in this midday darkness, watching the little girl stretch her arms out and knowing exactly how she felt.