April did not disappoint. Between its solar eclipse and the return—after 71 years—of Comet 12P Pons-Brooks, it gave us all we could ask for. It made us all kids again and turned kids into teachers. It showed us a way forward, a way out and a way to simply let go, leaving it up to us to decide which way was best. April illuminated our choices.
My wife and I watched the eclipse through an old, discolored colander. With a large piece of white cardboard as a projection screen, we watched the holes change shape over the course of an hour or so. What started as boring little circles became a dazzling array of crescents. Every few minutes we’d dart inside to watch TV, to marvel at how crowds from Texas to Maine would react exactly the same at the moment of totality when the moon fully blocked the sun, leaving them in daytime darkness.
When it was over I sent “colander” pictures to my grandchildren. Several, supplied with special glasses, had been able to go outside during the school day and view the eclipse directly. They told me, “It was awesome, Pop.” From one grandson I received photos taken by a classmate that were as good as any of the professional shots displayed in the media. He alerted me to a solar prominence clearly visible, protruding from the edge of the blackened sun. Yeah, whatever the differences between generations, on that day, they were gone.
Then, the rest of that week lumbered along. Until Friday. I’d been reading about the bright comet over the course of several weeks, but with every sunset I’d found something else to do or think about that kept me from trying to find it. I’d read about its discoverers, two men who had been lifelong comet hunters, who had the patience and perseverance over many years that I couldn’t find for even a few days.
Jean-Louis Pons gets credit for observing Comet 12P Pons-Brooks in 1812. William Brooks spotted it in 1883. It was most recently visible in 1954.
Four days after the eclipse festivities, I turned my attention away from whatever awfulness was in the news, grabbed my binoculars and headed outside right around sunset. The western sky was glowing, a mix of orange, dusty yellow and faded reds, a classic Arizona display. The app on my phone directed my view. Starting with a wonderfully carved waxing moon, I drifted down toward the horizon.
A line, like a scratch on a piece of film, caught my eye. It blended with all the colors surrounding it, but it was crisper, a little darker, a little out of place. At first, I thought it was a plane, a jet leaving a contrail behind it. But, no, this had to be the comet. I yelled for my wife to take a look before it dropped out of sight.
By the time she handed back the binoculars it was dimming, losing altitude and getting lost in the overwhelming light marking the end of another day. I looked on for another moment or two until it disappeared, and I thought back to other comets I’d seen. Seeing one has never been enough.
For that week in April we were given options. They were fleeting, but only if we believe that wonder and awe, once experienced, must drift away. They don’t have to. That’s the choice we have. That’s the choice we have not just following an eclipse or the long-awaited reappearance of a comet, but daily.
It’s hard, for me at least, to comprehend how to reconcile a life of such beauty against all the agony and despair so many experience. It’s hard to understand that choices are all too often bought and sold and sometimes bombed and starved into oblivion, that truth can be misshapen to mangle the choices we make.
Perhaps someday it will be different and we’ll realize that of all the infinite possibilities in the universe, the most incredible is that, together, we can bring some of those possibilities closer, to enable them like a colander during an eclipse. April proved that. In a month filled with awe and wonder, that was the most awesome, and wonderful, thing of all.
Harold Meckler can be contacted at glusk@proton.me