Total Eclipse of the Heart, Moon Over Miami

Woke up early this morning to watch the eclipse and realized something
that I suppose I knew deep down but never really realized. Eclipses do
that they say...astrologically speaking...shed light on hidden matters.

When I was a little girl, one year late at night, somewhere in the deep
of winter a boy named Mike France and I stayed up all night in his
front yard to watch a lunar eclipse through the lens of his brand new
telescope. I want to say it was December or January, a Christmas present
or maybe a birthday present as I think we were both Capricorns.

He had just gotten a real telescope on a little tripod and we decided to stay up all night and watch the moon disappear, which it did more often between floating clouds than not...but we were determined to watch the whole eclipse. His father sat up with us a while and then my mother sent my father across the street to sit up with us.. My mother being a good southern mom didn't think it was proper for a young girl of any age to lie on the grass all night huddled under a blanket with a young boy watching the moon. Whether she was worried on improprieties we were too young to dwell on or a voodoo queen coming out at midnight my father was forced to stand around trying to make meaningful conversation with Mike's father til my father muttered some partial curse word and announced he was going to bed and walked back across the street to leave us there fiddling with the telescope and waiting for the eclipse to peek out from behind the tall cumulus clouds. My father was a cityboy from New York and most New York City boys know nothing bout watching eclipses; trust me as I was later to learn in life.

But, Mike and I watched the moon, played with the telescope and felt like we
were explorers or scientists sharing this mystical lunar event through a real telescope, not a pair of binoculars or just our naked eyes. It seemed very important, very grand, very big and mature even if we were only seven or eith or at the most Nine.

Mike and I shared hurricanes, learned morse code together and once tried
to dig a tunnel to his best friend Jimmy's house to run wire so they
could talk all night sos style, dot, dash, dot dot dash. Well, Mikes father was a lineman for the telephone company. It made sense when we were seven as the 3 of us worked all summer until someone discovered us in the backyard digging and well...
That project was over real fast before we got halfway to China or Timmy and Jimmy's house. We used the leftover wire we had hidden away to make key chains lanyard style in lots of intertwining rainbow colors.

I think Mike was my first Capricorn "boyfriend."
Smart, scientific and a very bad allergy to bees.

We moved away suddenly around the time I developed breasts and a killer shape and my youngest brother was born to a less redneck neighborhood, across the road, down the block, around the corner to a neighborhood closer to the Synagogue where there were more Jewish boys to date who had more proper sounding names like David and Joseph and less tree trimming parties in December where I would toss silver icicles towards the ceiling which would land onto green fir trees waiting for their finishing touches after we put on the ornaments. Mike and I lost touch in Jr. High, but occaisionally ran into each other here and there in the hallway while we rain in different circles and different classes. He took honors science, I took honors english. A nice boy, a nice young man who died way too young from a severe reaction to bee stings. Really. Things like that really happen, not just in the movies but in real life where art imitates life and life imitates art. It was sad. One of my friends told me about it and it always seemed unreal, how could little Mike never grow up to be big Mike, how could he die from a bee bite? So sad. Well, you know what they say... shit happens and people die and no life is not fair. Sort of sucks. Staring, what can I say. Always felt bad for his family, nice people, nice front porch, nice memories of a nice boy who played a big part in my very young life.

I run in different circles now and I'm all grown up. I know lots of nice men but rarely do I ever meet a guy who wants to sit up at night and watch an eclipse. City boys who are nice but boring who can't imagine sitting in a back yard swatting at flies and mosquitoes to play peek a boo with the moon. And, I wonder often on life how hard it is to find a guy who will enjoy the simple things in life with me like the guys out on Bird Road who went fishing for catfish or stayed up and watched the moon or waited for the holidays or made ice cream in an ice cream machine for backyard parties... tutti frutti flavored.

Lost between two cultures... Jewish and Redneck, old Florida and big city, the Mikes of the past and the Mike's of the present.

I was out with a boyfriend one night a few years back and stopped in the parking lot to watch part of an eclipse, his response was it was hot and he wanted to get into air conditioning and he wanted to know what the big deal was about an eclipse, happens often enough, every few months somewhere on the Planet. Statistically true, logical. I stared. He didn't understand. Very nice man but no interest in the mysteries of the universe that seem neither mystical nor interesting. A few months later I went out for a midnight snack with a good guy friend who had just gotten into town and was hungry and wanted to talk a bit. We parked by Collins Avenue and as we walked into Bisseleh restaurant I asked him if he wanted to wait a few minutes watch the eclipse over the ocean (I had been watching from my porch earlier) and he said "Nah, I'm old.. I've seen lots of them, let's get something to eat" and I shook my head and wondered on how hard it is to find a guy to watch an eclipse with in life....and why it seemed so important to me.

Why?

I never could figure out why sharing an eclipse or a full moon was such a big deal to me but tonight as I watched the light of the full moon disappear into a sort of dusty reddish rose color as it played peek a boo with a tall cumulus cloud at the height of the eclipse...and disapeered for the last time before it became too light to watch the moon I realized I guess a part of me is still looking for Mike or a guy just like him or one of the gang of guys I grew up with out on Bird Road.

I mean there I was a little girl with a little guy friend doing what came naturally to me, sitting on a porch watching the stars come out, climbing trees, waiting for him to come back from catching cat fish in the canal or playing Khory League Softball or learning to pitch a good softball with his many cousins that lived nearby. A part of me wants to be that little girl again or at least find a guy like that again yet I no longer live in that world.

Sort of feel like an alien or stranger in a foreign land. Miami of today is no longer Miami of the past where all the boys were called Jimmy or Timmy or Billy or Bobby ... they have all moved to Georgia or North Carolina or up near Ocala.

Life goes on.. but at least I understand myself a little bit better and somewhere, sometime when the time is right things will work out. My life is good, my youngest son watched for a while with me tonight before disapeering into the house to take a shower and get ready for school.

I stood there and watched as I lost the eclipse behind that big tall cloud just at moon set, shortly after I watched it go into totality. I turned to my east and realized that it was twilight, that beautiful blue color I love so much just before the sunrises and a star appeared in the sky, not a star but Venus and like a small child I smiled and said, "Starbright, starlight, the first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might have the dream I wish tonight" and I wished for a boy like Mike who liked to watch eclipses and full moons and who liked to watch me :) ... and isn't allergic to bees :(

A real insight into my heart, a total eclipse of my heart.