Monday was “take-my-elderly-mom-to-the-doctor-day.” For me, that’s all about clearing the personal schedule, and getting paperwork together. Then hustling her out the door, even when she would like to linger and chat about what came through the mail this week. It’s about being a few minutes behind, but trying to drive in such a way as to get there alive.
We went on to spend over an hour with the doctor, answering questions, and doing blood draws.
Then it was time to leave. I was determined to land on my feet, and squeeze out what little productivity I could before evening youth activities.
I raced out, got the car, picked my mom up at the front door, and packed her walker.
On our way back to her place, we kept noticing people looking up at the sky. They had come out of their workplaces. Some were sitting on the grass. They were wearing cardboard glasses.
I forgot that there was supposed to be an eclipse. My busyness had kept me from remembering that the sun was going to be blotted out.
When we arrived back at the retirement community, a good number of folks who would otherwise be inside playing cards or watching television were out front. They, too, were looking up.
Now mind you, I had already heard plenty about the eclipse event—its path, and percentage of totality. Some online speculations were even saying it was a sign of the end of the world, etc., etc..
Anyway, I got mom out of the car and we shouldered through the crowd, heading back to her apartment.
A friend offered her some of those funky glasses so she could look at the eclipse, which she did, mostly to be nice to the lady. “Here,” she said, afterwards offering them to me. “Want to look?” I did, quickly.
The sun still only looked like an apple with a bite out of it. No big deal.
A couple of undone errands were still calling me from my planner. I gave my mom a quick kiss and hug, then darted back through the lobby to the car. The outdoors were bathed in a purplish daytime darkness I had never seen before. “You don’t even need glasses, now,” someone said.
I broke the rules, and looked at the eclipse. The sun was a black disk, with a thin white ring around it.
That is remarkable, I said to myself. And I took a few moments to see something I had never seen, and would probably never see again. I had been tempted to ignore the whole phenomenon, because urgent little tasks had said so.
“Enjoy life…all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun” (Eccl. 9:9).
