Text written as a response to an exercise from a writing course. I had a lot of fun with it. So I thought I'd share.
I had to look it up. The solar eclipse of 1999. I don't remember much of it. Not even the year. I learned that when I searched the web for clues of my black sun memory.
I knew it happened. I was at home, the one before my parents divorced. This means I would have been 12 at the oldest. But I have a date now so I know I was 9. Maybe it's why I remember the eclipse so vividly. The world changed and I was about to change too. I was going to leave all my friends behind and move to the big school. All alone. This would have been exciting. I'd already left my friends behind when I skipped a class and was forced into social groups that had been established for nearly a decade. It would have felt good to leave for somewhere new.
I thought the eclipse happened during the school year. I could see myself receiving a pair of special glasses from the teacher, but the Internet is firm. The eclipse happened on the 11th of August. That's slap bang in the middle of the school holidays. So no, I couldn't have gotten the glasses at school. Anyway. It doesn't matter how I got the glasses. I don't even recall them. When I picture myself, nine years old and ready to witness the eclipse, I see myself with cardboard 3D glasses you used to get for special holographic pages of magazines. I know those are no good for an eclipse.
I remember gathering with other folks from the street on the grass square. I imagine other children and loads of adults but this is making things up. Folks would mostly have been away on holiday and when I let my memory unfurl, I cannot recall a single other child. My brother would have been there but I do not remember him by my side. He doesn't even remember the eclipse. Maybe he was not there at all? Where would he have been? I don't know but it's not the point, so I do not mind.
It was a cloudy day. That I remember and the Internet backs me up. I want to say I was full of anticipation, eyes filled with wonder, body bouncing with excitement and sugar but that would not be true. By then I was already a very still and quiet child, easily missed and easily forgotten. I was standing with the adults, head bent towards the sky in silence. It would be easy to say in reverence but that would be a lie. I was curious. I had come to know what an eclipse is over the weeks leading up to it. I don't recall that but the National Archive has a large array of television programmes from the time talking about the eclipse. A brand of coffee even made multiple adverts linked to it. I don't recall any of that. Instead I wanted to know if the eclipse would truly turn the world to darkness like in The Adventures of Tintin. Was that really possible? Here was my chance to know and here were clouds. So many clouds. I remember every single one of them.
A local newspaper, already online by then, tells me that people could glimpse the shape of the sun being eaten by the moon through the clouds. I suppose that is true. It makes sense and I could say I witnessed it but that's not what is in my memory. What I recall most (after the clouds that is) is the wondrous gap in the clouds. I was the first one to see it. The adults were too busy talking they didn't notice immediately. But there it was, a gap, a growing gap. And then silence. We stared. I stared as the hungry moon swallowed the last of the sun. We were in darkness. Terrifying and wonderful darkness. We did not speak, did not gasp, we just all stood there witnessing the impossible darkness. The sun had turned black, a halo of light a faint trace of its powerful fire. Fire extinguished by the cool waxy surface of the moon.
I don't remember any sound, not a breath, not a leaf, not a car, not a plane. I don't know if this is true but the newspapers back me up. We all shut up and stared. The sun was gone.
It came back. Obviously. The earth moved, the moon moved. The sun though did not move and returned to its usual glow.
What happened after the eclipse I also do not know. Given the time, 12.24pm, I suppose I went for lunch and carried on reading whatever book I was in the middle of at the time. Or maybe, because it would make for nice story circle, maybe I read The Adventures of Tintin again, knowing exactly how powerful an eclipse is.