And the winner is . . .

I tried hard to resist the whole solar eclipse thing. I didn’t want to drive into the path of totality, and I declined a kind offer from California relatives to tag along with them. I was happy to get up at 5 a.m., make a pot of coffee, help them load the car and see them off by 6-ish. But after my own second cup of coffee, my house seemed so quiet. The weekend had been full of laughter, story-telling and toddler play. Now the stillness seemed oppressive. So I jumped at the chance to head to the park with my youngest son and his wife to experience at least 99.2 percent of the eclipse. It was breath-taking, a little disturbing and life-giving in a way I didn’t expect.


The slow bite the moon took into the sun was fascinating to watch. The running commentary from my son and his wife had me chuckling the whole time. The people around us kept it all a community event and made me glad I hadn’t watched alone from my back yard. The oddly disturbing thing was to see the disappearing sun's shadow bands, rippling across the grass. I heard a scientist describe them later as looking like light rippling across the bottom of a swimming pool.


The life-giving realization struck me as the air around us grew darker and colder by the moment. I couldn’t help but think of light and dark in competition. Of the times when my own my life seems to grow darker before my eyes. Now maybe in the path of totality, the darkness was complete. But here, a few miles away, it was a sharper version of twilight, a moment when our own shadows took on an HDTV clarity. What I realized, and this might be pretty disappointing if you’ve read this far in search of soul-deep truth, is that light wins. It's darkness that comes and goes.