A couple months ago, when I was giving blood with Vitalent, they mentioned that if you go to any of their locations and give blood you get eclipse glasses. I gave blood at my church on their mobile bus so no eclipse glasses. At the time I was thinking why do I want these glasses. It wasn’t until everybody started talking about it, that I finally understood. A few days before the eclipse, an email came from school informing that the students need to wear their class shirt and at precisely 1:35pm they were going out on the school grounds to watch the solar eclipse. About this same time, I received an email from Knowledge Tree about their eclipse party and that they had eclipse glasses for 79 cents. For 79 cents, we bought plenty for our immediate family that wasn’t working so we could have our own viewing party.
This is a once in a lifetime memory to make as a family or an individual about the total solar eclipse. Yes, there are more total eclipses, but this is one we didn’t have to travel great distances to see. In fact, before going to the school, I started watching right in my driveway.
Solar Eclipse
After buying the glasses, we loosely arranged that family was going to come to our house, but our plans quickly changed when an updated email from the school informed us that family can spend the eclipse with their child. This was so much better as we all got to act like kids again looking at the eclipse with our 10-year-old grandson.
When I first arrived at the school, a student asked me if I could see the eclipse as I had my glasses on, but I had my glasses pushed down so I could see over them while I was walking. I fixed my glasses and looked up and said no there was a cloud right now. Then suddenly, you could only hear things like “It looks like a banana or an orange peel” and other exciting noises from the entire student body neatly in organized groups by grade and teacher. In fact it was so easy to spot our grandson’s class as his t-shirt was gray and each class has a class has their own designated color. This went on until 1:57 p.m. when we reach our almost total coverage of 98%.
We all seem to be mesmerized until finally we saw the eclipse smile at us to say your memory is complete and then the whistle blew to signal for the kids to assemble in the gymnasium for a pep rally, which family could not attend as there was simply no space.
We walked the short distance home, and I went to my greenhouse to do some transplanting and kept an eye on the eclipse. It was back to normal about 3:15 pm.
Here are some photos my daughter-in-law took with her Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G phone and used the lens of our extra eclipse glasses to shield the phone lens. She said that you had to hold the camera steady to get the shots. For, sky photos our iPhones were inferior as they didn’t have the 50x magnification as the Samsung. Hint to Apple: upgrade this for the next model as it is useless for taking great moon or galaxy shots.
Of course, my memory on my tree will include all the family photos as I respect my family’s privacy with my website and, as far as Ancestry goes, nobody can view living photos on your tree unless you give permission to the person to do so.
Making Memories is Important
When I said I was going to watch the eclipse, friends told me the next one will be in 2044 and I decided to check if this was correct. True, the next total solar eclipse is in 2044 for North America, which is doable as I could still be around at 81 years old, but it won’t be passing through our state. In fact, it is only three states: Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota around sunset. The next total Solar eclipse for the southern United States is 2078, which I will be seeing it from heaven and our grandson would be 64, which is close to my age now.
Who knows maybe he will be sitting on the same school grounds telling his grandkids the time he did this very same thing with his entire school, parents and grandparents.
I am sure my grandson’s memories will differ from mine, and that is the beauty of memories: we each focus on different things that make it memorable. Maybe for our grandson, just having family there made it special for him. I love this phrase: “Create memories, not things,” meaning material things fade, but memories last a lifetime. I know in a lot of posts I talk about my memories of what I remember. I missed documenting my grandparents and parents and that is why I continually remind my readers of the importance to include as many memories from loved ones in your ancestry as you can. Once your loved ones are gone, it is their memories that were lovingly documented in your family history that will be read by all, thereby lasting a lifetime.
