CHAPTER
thirty-six
All week long the Peanuts comic strip in the newspaper had given advice for how to safely view the eclipse. Hugo had me clip each of them so he could paste them onto a piece of thick paper. We read them together about half a dozen times each, Hugo listening intently, not getting the jokes.
He took them as serious instructions from Linus for how to avoid going blind on the day of the eclipse.
The very last strip which ran on the morning of the eclipse showed Lucy and Linus standing in the rain, the marvelous event blocked by heavy rain clouds.
“I don’t want that one,” Hugo told me, scowling. “That one makes me sad.”
I folded up the paper and put it in the junk drawer, saving it for whenever he’d change his mind.
“Nick said he was going to look at it,” Hugo said from where he sat, looking over the cartoons at the table. “With his bare eyes.”
“He did, huh?” I shook my head. “He’ll be sorry if he does.”
“Maybe.” I turned my watch around to remind myself to keep an eye on my nephews. The last thing Marvel needed was for one or both of them to burn their eyes out.
“I won’t look. I promise.”
“That’s good of you.” I wiped down the counters. “Are you almost ready to go?”
He slid down from the seat and put the Peanuts comics under his arm. I could just imagine him telling Nick and Dick the rules of how to safely enjoy the moon blocking out the sun. Just the thought of it made me smile.
“Don’t forget your box,” I called after him.
He ran into the living room for the old moving box that we’d turned into a pinhole viewer. Carrying it, he hardly fit through the door out to the garage.
I nearly lost my composure, watching him move through that old house as if it was always where he’d belonged. Where he’d always been meant to be.
My heart seemed to swell first with love for that little boy. Then it ached because he wasn’t mine. Not truly. I wouldn’t have him there with me forever.
I cleared my throat and picked up my car keys from the hook on the wall and followed behind him.
He might not be mine forever and always, but he was for that day.
It would have to be enough.
Stan and Albert had lugged a half dozen lawn chairs onto the roof of the bakery. Marvel and I put down a picnic blanket for the boys to sit on. We had a plate full of special cookies that Albert had made just for the occasion, yellow frosting on one side with a crescent of chocolate on the other.
Pop came out on the roof following Nick and Dick who, true to fashion, elbowed one another to be first up.
“Beat ya,” Nick said.
“Did not,” Dick said back. “Grandpop, who won?”
“I don’t know,” Pop said. “I can’t tell you apart.”
Hugo stood beside me, watching their shenanigans and shielding his eyes with one of his hands. It was a mightily sunny day, but I knew that wasn’t why he shied away from the brightness.
He was afraid that the sun would blind him even before the eclipse began. Nothing I said could convince him otherwise.
It seemed that Linus and Charlie Brown had adequately warned the poor boy to distraction.
The kids put their heads in their boxes, letting the light come through the pinhole on one side and reflect on the white paper they’d pasted on the inside. Whenever Hugo took his off, he insisted on sitting on my lap, curled into a ball, his face buried in my chest. Eventually he told me that the sun made him feel weird.
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice to a whisper.
“It makes me afraid,” he said. “And sad.”
“Why?”
“What if the moon swallows the sun forever and we never see it again?”
“Oh, sweetie, the moon won’t swallow it. It just blocks it for a few minutes.” I showed him, moving one hand in front of the other. “Then when it passes, we’ll have our sun back.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes. I promise.” I rubbed his back. “There’s nothing to worry about. Remember Sam? Don’t hide in your shell, sweetie.”
But the closer we got to the time for the moon to block out the sun, the stranger I felt. The sky seemed to be the wrong color. I got goose bumps on my arms even though the day was warm. Something in me felt off.
Just about four o’clock the moon approached the sun, moving slowly toward it as if it meant to sneak up on it. We warned the boys over and over not to look directly at it. Marvel even made sure to remind Pop.
“I’m no imbecile, you know,” Pop said, but still turned his face so as not to be tempted.
The boxes on the heads of the boys were quite comical, and I was glad I’d brought my camera so I could snap a picture of it. They’d used such big boxes that sat awkwardly on their shoulders and dwarfed their bodies.
Marvel held a colander over the cream-colored blanket on the roof; a hundred crescents made incomplete dots all along the fabric.
Even though I knew I wasn’t to look, it seemed like such a sad thing that I couldn’t witness this event that would never happen again. Not quite like that, in my lifetime.
It took all my effort not to turn my face sunward to see the most incredible thing I ever could. But I knew that it would have left me blind.
What a world, that the full glory of it was more than we could bear.
It took my breath away, to think how much greater the majesty of the One who moved the moon across the sky, who held the sun in place, and who allowed us to enjoy every bit of it.
How he must have loved us so.