Living with Crazy: Total Lunar Eclipse

In January 2000, scientists from NASA and other organizations told people in the North and South America to be prepared to witness an amazing astronomical spectacle: the total eclipse of the moon. This would occur on the evening of Jan. 20.

Apparently, such an event can only take place when there is a full moon, and only if the moon passes through a portion of the Earth's shadow.

I must have been reading about all about the lunar eclipse that Thurday, or hearing about on the local radio.

It was to be a rare enough event and one of great beauty. It was scheduled for sometime around 8 p.m., Pacific time. Yes, that was a bit after our son's bedtime. He was less than 2 years old at that time, but I thought it couldn't hurt to keep him up a little longer and share this celestial event with him--even if he would be too young to understand or remember.

One concern many in Humboldt County would have on this day would be the weather--and whether the weather would allow them to see the eclipse.

One of those big Pacific Northwest storms had been passing through Arcata and the rest of the coastal region. These winter storms off the far North Coast of California are incredible to behold. I suppose they are not unlike storms--severity-wise--that we have in the Bay Area.

It's just that the North Coast setting gives these storms their drama and their beauty. On a stormy day, you can drive up 101, along the redwood-covered bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, between Arcata and the state and national redwood parks. You can look west over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Above the ocean is the sky, all shades of gray and black. Both ocean and sky look as if they are massing for battle.

But it's beautiful, and I would love to take my son on drives up 101 on stormy winter days. After a stop at some vista point to look at the ocean and sky, I drive us some more, sometimes in the hope that he'd fall asleep for his afternoon nap.

Such a drive probably happened on this Jan 20., the day of this amazing lunar eclipse.

Fortunately by nightfall, the storm clouds over Humboldt County had parted. Those of us living here would be able to see the eclipse.

"It had rained in the afternoon. Poured," I wrote in my journal for that day. "But the clouds cleared away, so that by the time the moon started rising between the redwoods behind our house, the skies were perfectly, breathtakingly clear."

"It was a cold night, but not too cold. I had dressed our son in his pajamas, and wrapped him in a blanket," I wrote.

My son was a bit sleepy.

I was in my usual tights and sweater. There was a built-in bench on the redwood deck of our house in Arcata. I don't know where my husband was that night. Working? On a business trip? Just inside--depressed--and not interested in the lunar eclipse?

As I sat on the bench, still damp from the afternoon's early rain. I held my son on my lap.

As we waited for the amazing eclipse, I talked to him and tried to tell him some of his usual bedtime stories. He became tired and fussed, indicating he wanted me to take him upstairs to his room and put him to bed. I wondered if the cold night air, and the desire to be all cuddled inside, had made him sleepy.

"Slowly, a shadow passed over the moon, reducing its width to a crescent," I later wrote. "I don't think I've seen so many stars in the sky above our Arcata home. Millions and billions of tiny pinpoints of light. ... There were so many, I tried to imagine discerning the points of constellations. ... It was like trying to divine shapes in a pointillist painting."

I showed all the stars to my son. He settled down and looked up through sleepy eyes. He yawned and became still. I held him outside a bit longer, as the earth's shadow moved in front of the moon, making it burn colors of dark orange and gold, like embers in a dying fire. And as the moon darkened to its soft, low gold, the stars brightened even more.

Later that night, after I had put my son to bed, I looked out the window. The moon was back in all its glory: full and bright.

Living with Crazy: How It All Began....

Taking a break from Walnut Creek Patch duties this afternoon. I was missing my blog, which I don't get the chance to post on very much these days. The Patch job is pretty overwhelming. Covering Walnut Creek is pretty overwhelming.... So much going on.

I digress ... Events have come up lately that made me think I wanted to write more about how I got to the point in life that I am at now: married to a man I love and cherish but whose mental illness has left me often feeling depressed, cursed, hopeless. I end up feeling even more sad because my husband feels so very bad about the misery he has caused other people, as he explains in his blog A Life With Mental Illness This is not how life was supposed to turn out. I guess a lot of us could say that, right? A lot of us go through things.

The thing I went through started like this.

(Actually I'm going to steal some lines, add some, from an article I wrote for Diablo magazine in January 2003. Unfortunately, the article is not available online. )

On the morning of March 22, 2001, an ambulance dispatched by Humboldt County Emergency Services pulled into the driveway of what was then my home in Arcata. My husband, John, and I calmly walked out to the waiting vehicle. As John approached the ambulance door, he looked at a police officer who had been sent along to make sure this 5150 call took place without incident. Despite John's calm demeanor, something could still go wrong. After all, he had minutes earlier been threatening to cut himself with a knife. But as he saw the officer, John turned to me and asked with a faint hopeful smile "Do you think he will shoot me?" John then climbed in the ambulance and was taken away.

I had never before expected the man, to whom I'd been married for nearly 10 years, would ask me such a terribly sad, desperate question. But over the previous two days, my life had been turned upside down. This was just the latest in a quick series of shattering blows to my comfortable image of us as a husband and wife, the parents of a 3-year-old child, educated professionals, with pretty much everything going fine. And so much to look forward to.

Just two days before, I had taken my son to preschool and was in our bedroom upstairs when I heard the garage door slowly grind open. It had to be John, but I couldn't understand what he was doing home in the middle of a workday morning. I remember walking out to the second-floor landing and looking down into our living room, with its two-story high ceilings and banks of windows that let in views of the redwood forest surrounding our large back yard. The sky, which I could also see from those windows, was overcast.

John, a tall, slender man with glasses, was emptying his keys and wallet onto a kitchen counter, his ritual upon arriving home.

Hearing my footsteps, he looked up. In a quiet, urgent voice, he said: "Something bad has happened."

More to come, when I get a chance...