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By Cara McDonough

Two unique events shaped our lives recently: a rare earthquake that hit the northeast, and last week's solar eclipse.

I experienced neither event fully. In fact, I didn't feel the earthquake, or the aftershock that followed, at all, despite the fact that where I live in Connecticut, plenty did. “Was that an earthquake?” they wrote on my neighborhood Facebook group and in the texts I received. “My whole house just shook!”

My house, well, did not. Did it? I doubted myself immediately — my very ability to feel — as the reports rolled in. I’d been scurrying around in a typical weekday morning rush. Finishing an email, grabbing a load of clothes from the dryer, hightailing it to the car to go to an appointment. Had I been driving when it happened? That would make me feel much better, but the timing didn’t work. Had I been too in motion myself to feel the non-proverbial earth move under my feet? Or was this something deeper? An innate lack of awareness; an unfixable character flaw.

I did a lot of soul-searching. I retraced my steps. Had I experienced, but not registered this tectonic shift? I developed a complex, having missed out on the collective fear — the drama! I had no earthquake story to tell.

"Everybody's getting over-excited about this," my 15-year-old daughter declared when she got home from school, 15-year-old daughters being really excellent at disdain. "You all have earthquake FOMO!"

I think that my — fine — FOMO, contributed to my already uncertain, and increasingly defensive, feelings about the total solar eclipse on Monday, particularly our decision to stay home and watch it where we live in Connecticut, rather than drive the three hours to Vermont for totality. My adventure-seeking son questioned our plan, or lack thereof, repeatedly and I couldn’t argue. All reasoning in the face of such a decision — work, three kids with three intricate daily schedules, other upcoming trips — are lame in the face of missing the most extraordinary version of a planetary event.

So, I settled into my uneasy resignation and talked to fellow parents about pulling our fourth graders out of school a little early. We’d gather on the playground with our families for our state’s far inferior — according to literally every commentary I ingested on the topic — version of the eclipse.

I joked with my friends over text about my feelings as we made our plans, our giddy jealousy (because come on, we got it) yielding faux contempt towards our traveling counterparts. "NEVER totality!" wrote one. Another: "Those totality people are going to be spending a lot of time on 95 today standing still. Or 91. Whatever. I don't pay attention to totality routes."

Despite our less dramatic environs, I found the whole thing quite dramatic. The temperature dropped and the air got dusky as we parents screamed at our children to, “Look, now! This is the most important part!” They did, but seemed far more impressed that they’d been dismissed early, and the playground was theirs for the taking. My nine-year-old, Aidy, pressed the eclipse glasses to her eyes. “It’s a sliver!” she declared, before sprinting to the slide where her classmates were gathered.

As the crescent sun slowly returned to its normal shape, and we all worried that we’d accidentally “looked right at it” with our bare eyes as we placed and removed our glasses throughout the afternoon, I felt, admittedly, a little relieved that the moment, with all its anticipation, all that expectation, had passed.

We walked home, the afternoon light back to normal, setting the early spring forsythia ablaze all along the sidewalks of our neighborhood. Already — already! — the major events of the past few days seemed like foreign things, impossible to imagine in this suburban landscape.

I thought about my non-earthquake, our semi eclipse, and the strange joy of feeling so small in this ruthless world, this infinite cosmos. Even half-marvels, it turns out, are a reminder of our collective humanity. My daughter skipped ahead, far too young to be worried by the lack or intensity of such thrills. There are, she reminds me, wonders every day. Some so subtle, you could easily miss them.

—Cara McDonough

Cara McDonough decided to be a writer when her sixth-grade English teacher thought her paper on Atticus Finch was good enough to read aloud in class. In retrospect, this was a very pragmatic decision for a 12-year-old. As an adult she has published pieces for national newspapers and other outlets, and regularly on her blog. She received an honorable mention for her essay "45 is the New... 45" in the 2024 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition. Her favorite stories are about the ordinary moments in life that connect us all. She has a job in PR, and lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with her family.