La Luna - A Grand Night Out

My name is Lynley, and I am eleven. I am interested in all things biological and scientific.

My mother calls me her difficult child. The one who quickly gets distracted or left behind, examining ants on a trail, a spider forming a web, or some other exciting phenomenon. The world around us contains an abundance of interesting plants, insects, and creatures. I like checking them out.

I am sitting in a tree, watching a tiny caterpillar measure the leaf he travels over. “Inch worm, inch worm . . .” Stretching out his front legs, creeping his sticky back prolegs forward, his body like a horseshoe, then stretching his front legs out again. At the far edge of the leaf, he starts munching. I am mindful that caterpillars can grow to 100 times their hatch size. Fascinating. A fresh, leafy scent fills the air, the breeze whispers through the branches, and dappled shade enshrouds me. A perfect hiding place to escape from younger siblings, to remember for the next time we play hide-and-seek or be concealed from a murderous enemy. 

On another day, I conducted a serious scientific experiment. Our front door is high above the ground of our side-of-a-hill house. All the way to the top and around a small concrete platform, green-painted metal rungs prevent visitors from falling. We children were banned from going up these steps or using that door in case we fell through the rungs. One day, I carried our cat, Louie, up the steps to check something. If cats are dropped upside down from a height, do they land on their paws? I had been told they do. I held the feline over the surround and nearly dropped her in fright when my mother rapped hard on the window overlooking the steps. Her face was drawn in a scowl, and her mouth was open. Definitely furious. The door wrenched open.

“How dare you do that to the cat.”

“It’s an experiment to see if she will land on her feet.”

“It’s animal cruelty, is what it is. How dare you sneak up here. Get down this instant. Don’t you ever do anything like this again. I can’t understand you. You won’t kill the caterpillars that eat our cabbages. Yet, you’ll torture the cat.”

This story about what I attempted to do to our moggy is often repeated as an example of how bizarre I am. At the time, it seemed a harmless enough prank—I mean experiment—if the theory is correct.

The week of the Lunar Eclipse, I drove my family crazy. My fascination with the Moon had gone beyond Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Day Out when they flew a homemade rocket to the Moon and discovered it was made of cheese. The actual Moon landing (July 21, 1969) proved that false. Shame, really. I’d like to fly to the Moon for a hunk of cheese. But not if it’s Gorgonzola. Yuck!

A total lunar eclipse was predicted for April 13, 1968. It would be visible in our part of the world, which is thrilling. All week, my teacher taught lessons about eclipses, and I’ve learned so much riveting information.

On Monday night, I informed my family that there could be lunar or solar eclipses. “Eclipses happen when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned. When the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, the Sun is covered all or partially from our view. This is a solar eclipse. It is during a new moon phase when the Moon’s orbital plane is closest to the Earth’s orbital plane. A lunar eclipse happens when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are precisely aligned. The Earth’s shadow falls upon the surface of the Moon. This happens about twice a year. The Moon can also become a red color. A blood Moon.” The explanation could prove too complicated for my family, so I skipped it.

On Tuesday, I learned about partial eclipses. “If the presence of the Moon in front of the Sun or the Earth’s shadow on the Moon is not perfectly in the center, they are called partial eclipses.”

On Wednesday, our teacher explained the parts of a lunar eclipse: “The outer area of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon is the penumbra, and the darker area nearer the center is called the umbra. A total eclipse happens when the Moon is aligned with the darker part—the umbra—of the Earth’s shadow. The Sun is behind the Earth. If a partial eclipse occurs in the lighter penumbra area, the eclipse may barely be visible.”

It seemed my family didn’t have as much interest in the topic as me.

On Thursday, we all painted either a solar or lunar eclipse, and we could choose to paint a partial eclipse if we wanted. I painted a total lunar eclipse. It was the best.

On Friday, we had a multiple-choice test to determine what we had learned during the week. The top mark was a tie between a boy in my class and me. Multiple-choice is so easy. For each question, there is a correct answer, a could-be-correct answer, an incorrect answer, and a ridiculous answer to choose from.

For example:

The shadow on the Moon in a lunar eclipse is caused by 

1. the Sun’s shadow moving across the Moon 
2. the Earth’s shadow moving across the Moon.
3. the Sun going on strike.
4. the umbra being in the wrong place.

Or this one:

Some lunar eclipses can barely be seen because

1. the Sun and the Moon are too far away from the Earth.
2. the light from the Sun is too bright.
3. the position of the Moon in the penumbra part of the Earth’s shadow makes a hazy shadow on only part of the Moon.
4. the Earth is moving too fast.

As you can see, some of the options are obviously wrong.

I really wanted to see the eclipse and begged my mother to let me stay up. The full part of the eclipse was scheduled to happen about 4.30 am on April 13. I knew my Mum wouldn’t let me stay up for five hours. I couldn’t see myself lasting that long, either. After begging and begging, she agreed to set her alarm, wake me, and lead me out of bed to see the eclipse. At the same time, she would leave me to see as much as I wanted of the most exciting part – the total eclipse – and then make my way back to bed. The fact it would be happening on a Saturday made it possible. My mother hated a broken night’s sleep. She kept on muttering about cruelty to a parent, so I effused as much gratitude as I could.

How exciting. Some of my friends said they planned to see the eclipse, too. One of my friends said their entire family would watch it with them. How wonderful to have a family so into science.

On Friday night, my mother insisted on an early night for me despite my being the oldest. I usually whine about early nights, but not tonight. A small price for being woken up to see the eclipse at an unearthly (no pun intended) hour.

I was so excited that it was hard to sleep. My mother had been reminded several times to check that her alarm had been properly set. I did eventually drift off. Later, I remembered my dream of flying to the Moon and discovering it was made of cottage cheese. I’m not particularly fond of cottage cheese. The main problem is that I sank down and couldn’t get out. I don’t remember what happened next, but I must have still been asleep.

When I woke, my eyes were still shut, and I felt cold. My bed felt hard. Had someone opened the curtain because it seemed too bright? Had someone turned the light on? I carefully opened my eyes and bolted up in shock. I sat on the kitchen floor in front of the side window. The curtain had been pulled open, and daylight poured in. What on earth had happened? 

My mother came into the kitchen. “Good morning, Sweetie. How was your eclipse? You didn’t go back to bed?”

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I worked out what must have happened. “Mum, I don’t recall anything: being woken up, coming here, seeing the eclipse, or going to sleep again.”

“I definitely woke you up, dear. You must have been tired.”

“How can I have been too tired? I’ve been waiting to see the eclipse all week. I can’t remember a thing. I don’t know how I got here.”

“You were staring at the eclipse when I went back to bed. Maybe you will remember what you saw later.”

I never remembered anything. It is lodged in my subconscious, I’m sure. I must have sleepwalked out of bed. Too busy drowning in tons of cottage cheese!

“Stinky poo, stinky poo! Knickers! Knickers! Knickers!” Spike Milligan’s Badjelly the Witch says this naughty expression when things go wrong. Usually, this expletive leaves me feeling satisfied. Saying it didn’t help me. Nothing can adequately describe how I feel. Devastated? Like the bottom had fallen out of my world?

I worried about what I would tell my classmates on Monday . . . I would tell them I saw it. After all, I’m an expert on the subject. It’s not really a lie. I know I saw it with wide-open eyes. It’s trapped in my head. I just can’t bring it to mind. No one except my family will ever know what really happened.

After all the facts I have learned and related, the follow-up will be fiction. Please, don’t tell anyone.

Suddenly, I had a sensation of falling. Thwack! My chin hurt so bad that my eyes watered. I’d bitten my tongue as well. Had I received a boxer’s left hook? Ouch! I looked around me and stared in surprise out of the window. There in the sky, could it be? A perfectly dark sphere surrounded by a halo of bright light. I had been standing here sleeping the whole time. I should be grateful. Only my chin hurts. While having a nightmare about missing the eclipse, I almost missed it for real. I could have knocked myself out on the windowsill, and my nightmare could have really happened. Minus swimming in a sea of cottage cheese.

I gazed at the beautiful sight, thinking of descriptive words to share with my family and friends about it. What it amounts to is that reality and fiction can feel the same. Am I still dreaming? Maybe the next scientific topic I’ll look into is dreams.

The End