I remember fairly little of the celestial details of my first total solar eclipse, which I saw with my mother and brother. Even so, my memory of that day is indelible.
My brother and I had some qualms about making the trip. My mother’s alcoholism wasn’t stable at all — she could be all smiles, charming and funny, and she’d disappear for three minutes and chug vodka straight out of the bottle. But somehow, the day of the eclipse went beautifully. It was the last time I saw my mother when she was happy, with family, outdoors and sober.
All that got overshadowed when just one week later there was a major earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, near a town I had spent many years in as a child. I traveled to the region and spent two weeks pulling people from the rubble. Tens of thousands had died.
Just three months later, my mother was found dead. I rushed back to Istanbul to comfort my grandmother and for the funeral. While I was in my mother’s flat, I felt another rumble. It turned out to be a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Duzce, Turkey. I went there too, but I didn’t stay long.
Now whenever I see photos of rubble or pancaked buildings from an earthquake, I smell the unmistakable stench of corpses trapped in the wreckage, rotting in the summer sun. A hallucination, but of smell.
Last Friday, amid preparations for another trip to see the eclipse, again with my family, I felt another rumble. An unexpected earthquake, this time in New York City, my home.
There are many theories and superstitions about eclipses and earthquakes that geologists don’t put much stock in, but in my case, there had been a very personal triad of eclipse, earthquake and death. I was rattled.
Later, I made tea and spinach pastries, an afternoon ritual that reminds me of my grandmother. Then it hit me. I was trying to clear one association in my head — the eclipse-earthquake-tragedy triad — with another one, my grandmother’s love.
What else is life but building good associations to chase away the bad?
It’s corny but it’s true: It’s not the events themselves that matter but who we are with to share the wonder of how the sun and the moon align to cast an enchanting shadow on our miraculous planet full of life.
