I thought we were walking to a field to see the full eclipse, but it turned out we were just going to stay in the neighborhood. Why wouldn’t we? No crowds, no noise, and the view just as good. So we set up a few lawn chairs under an evergreen and waited.
It wasn’t my neighborhood. It was our friends’ neighborhood, a little corner of Dayton, Ohio where all the houses are duplexes, the lawns are hurt-your-eyes green, and the streets are lined with blossomy crab and pear trees.
I couldn’t stop staring at the trees. We have them in Michigan, I’ve just never seen a neighborhood where they were planted in every yard. Some were white, some pink. From a couple houses down across the street, white Bradford pear petals drifted our way like fantastically fat snowflakes in slow motion. Our friend told us it’s been banned in Ohio as of this year, because it’s too aggressive. I watched the petals drift and mourned a little.
The tree directly in front of us, I later found out with a little sleuthing assistance from my Twitter followers, was a fruitless crabapple called Spring Snow. The flowers were similar to the pear tree blossoms, but the trunk was shorter and twistier, had a little more character. I took a picture of the sun through its branches. Reading up the day before, I’d stumbled onto clickbait articles solemnly warning that you shouldn’t try to take pictures of the eclipse with your phone, because the sun’s rays could kill it. I mean, looking at the sun directly can hurt your eyes, ergo, pointing your phone at it will hurt your phone. It’s science!
I had my jacket with me because I knew there would be a temperature drop, but I definitely didn’t need it yet. It was the perfect temperature, the perfect sky, the perfect day. I felt sorry for friends who had traveled to Texas specifically to avoid gambling on Midwestern weather. To be fair, April snow or freezing rain is a known quantity in the Midwest. In Michigan, I have less than fond memories of green Christmases followed by white Easters. But on this particular day, while my friends in Texas looked up and fretted at the clouds, the Ohio sky decided to behave itself, just for us.
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