The surreal experience of witnessing a total eclipse brings Aaron some unexpected clarity.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
Transcript
Aaron Calafato: Man, we were in the path of totality. Sounds like a heavy metal band, Cleveland, Ohio, and more specifically, 25 miles south in my little town of Medina here, we were in the path of totality for this eclipse that just happened a couple of days ago. Total eclipse. And we didn't have to leave home. I could just go into the backyard, look up, and be in awe of the majesty of the solar system and the universe. Incredible. Now I'm a bit of a science nerd. So the data was in. I had studied and read about this phenomenon. I thought I knew what to expect. And on one hand, I did, but I could not have predicted how I would react to this whole thing. And maybe you can relate. And I'll tell you what happened right after the music.
Cori Birce: You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. This is season 4.
Aaron Calafato: My wife Cori and I planned for this day for a while. We're nerds about this. We had all the kids. They didn't have school. We had hamburgers and hot dogs ready to grill later in the afternoon. And luckily, Cori got the sunglasses, the special ones. And we even survived a last-minute recall on these glasses. These things looked like they came from a cracker jack box. But she ordered these pre-ordered these, whether it's real news or fake news. At the end of the day, there was this recall and me being a hypochondriac. I was like, we gotta look into this. And luckily, when we looked at the insignia on the glasses, we were in the clear. That meant that when the total eclipse happened, it would not be burned permanently onto our eyeballs and retinas. So that was really good news. I felt safe after the double confirmation of the safety element of the glasses. That morning, the whole family, we went to the square center of town. We wanted to people-watch. There was a ton of out-of-towners. And it was almost like our little town and many towns in Ohio because of this phenomenon were the center of the country for just a little bit or more important than we usually are. The kids would see the cars passing or parked, and they would go look at that license plate from Alaska. Look at that license plate from Washington, DC. It was kind of a prideful, cool moment to be in the mix. You know what I mean? And by this time, the square started filling up with people in town, out of towners. They had the lawn chairs. They had the coolers. They had their picnic baskets. Everyone was ready for this moment, which meant we needed to get back because I had to go into full dad mode and start grilling hamburgers and hot dogs in the backyard. I had my grill heated up. We had in the yard trampoline, a new addition to the backyard courtesy of the Easter bunny. And by the way, the Easter bunny brings a trampoline doesn't even assemble it himself. I got some issues anyways. Appreciate it, but took a little while. We all put it together, but it was perfectly positioned in the center of the backyard so that you could lay on it, look up at the sun, enjoy the countdown until the total eclipse. You could jump up and down to celebrate before, during, and after. The table's ready, the chairs ready, the grills going, hot dogs, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, we got the buns, we got lettuce, tomato, ketchup, pickles, we're ready to go. I crushed 2 hamburgers. Ken Went, the audio producer from this podcast. He comes over from across town. Come on over, Ken. Come to the backyard. It's a party. He brings his camera to catch some beautiful images. We have all three kids. The 2 boys, their biological father, Adam. He comes over. We're all hanging in their one big happy family. And the clock is ticking at this point, and the moon shadow is starting to go over just a little bit of the sun. It's starting the blotting process. Things are getting a little dim. And that's when I noticed the birds, they're starting to lose their minds. Circadian rhythms are off. Chipmunks too. They were out of their minds. All the woodland creatures, my friends, in the backyard, lonely guy. They didn't know what to do either. And I was actually feeling a lot like them. I started feeling a little anxious. I knew that this was only happening in a certain portion of the country along this path where this solar alignment thing is happening, but it still was getting strange because it started looking more and more like twilight. I felt so out of control as it got darker. And the temperature started to drop. And I looked up again, I could see the shadow covering more and more of the sun. And at this point, I was doing a 10-minute countdown to the final 1-minute countdown. I'm a little OCD. And so I started announcing 10 minutes away. The kids are cheering. 5 minutes away. Cori's going, oh my gosh. 3 minutes away. And as I'm saying this out loud, I was surprised how dark it got. I'm like, this is getting really dark, and we're not even at totality. One minute away. I held Luciana, my daughter's hand. I said, remember this moment for the rest of your life. Okay? You promise? She was, yeah, dad. 30 seconds away. Everybody got their glasses on. Make sure you look up, but keep your glasses on. I don't want anybody getting the retinas burned. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. It's like New Year's Eve with Better. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now in this moment, everything went silent. Birds, animals, quiet. It was so dark, misty, hazy. I heard a weird vibration. And I'm looking up, and I'm like, I can't believe what I'm seeing. All I could hear is my daughter saying totality, totality is she jumped up and down. I heard Cori in the background say, do you see that solar flare? Just excitement in her voice. I heard the boys gasp. I heard Ken say, oh my god. This collective awe, and it was the sounds that kept me grounded, but I was feeling transcendent. Listen, I'm a straight edge. I don't drink smoke. Do any of that stuff. But the only thing I can compare this to from what I've heard is, like, a trip, if you know what I'm saying, but it was so good. There was something in this cosmic event that made me fall to my knees and cry. I'm afraid to admit it. I'd start crying. And I said a silent prayer to myself, just saying thank you. For letting me be a tiny speck of dust on this cosmic ride. And looking up at this shadow and flare in the sky and utter darkness around me. The thing that was really revealed as my daughter, by the way, is looking at me in this moment going, what the hell is going on with dad? What it revealed to me, though, was while I had this visual that you've all seen in the papers and on TV by now, The lasting thing for me was the meaning in all of this. No matter the data, no matter the predictability and the science, it didn't account for the meaning of this moment. And it's this. I got to go in my backyard and look up, and a total eclipse occurred. And I had the gift to witness it with the people I love the most in the world. I'll talk to you next week.
Cori Birce: 7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Went. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead, original music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at ValleyView.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
