One morning in May 1994, I arrived at the small private school a few of my seven siblings and I attended in Quincy, Illinois to find that every window in the place had been papered over, sealing out harmful rays and simultaneously sealing up curious eyes.
“It’s a solar eclipse,” they said. ”It’s dangerous to be out there.”
Even the grownups hunkered down in the school building behind those covered windows with no outside recess and no glimpse of the darkness that came to visit our town in the middle of that day.
My engineer dad, on the other hand, chose curiosity.
During the eclipse, he grabbed a piece of pegboard and a piece of poster board and took them out to the parking lot at his office, projecting the event in multiples on the poster board he set at his feet.
I remember so many times I saw this same sense of curiosity and work-around-what-should-be in my dad—a wheelbarrow ride with two little toddlers (my sister and myself) to see the Northern Lights near our home in upstate New York, numerous drives around various countrysides where we lived, photographing lightning instead of hiding in the basement, working at his own car maintenance, warming his tenor voice up in the shower, playing with dry ice, showing us what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar…
I think he loved having little kids because he loved to play, because we gave him a reason not to be so grown-up as he felt he had to be, because he still had a lot of wonder in him.
Dad was the person who taught me that wonder always has a place.
“Yes, it’s dangerous sometimes, but how can we do it safely anyway? How can we make it fun?” he’d say in his teaching voice (and maybe not in so many words).
He taught us to ask questions, to look things up, experiment, and consider our own perspective and ideas rather than accepting others’ thoughts and actions at face value.
Even as I grow further away from childhood and live almost a continent away from my dad, I often hear his voice in the things I say to my kids, feel his curiosity in my desire, and remember that it is possible to live my life as though everything is for wonder—even if others sometimes see only danger.
I’ll be watching moon-laced shadows on my California sidewalk during today’s solar eclipse, and thinking about how maybe he’ll get to peek at the stars from his view much nearer to the line of total darkness.
I hope he has fun.
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Today, I am continuing a series of essays here I’m creating to share about some of the people that I carry around inside my heart. I’ve moved 35 times in my 42 years, lived in 9 states here in the U.S, and traveled internationally. I’ve had hundreds of photo shoots and met thousands of people, and I have so many memories of what has proven to be a rather wonderful life to this point—however much LIFE has occurred to make me think otherwise.
So as I’m a bit of a magpie about pretty, shiny things (and magical experiences with other humans), it feels rather natural for me to make a collection of these stories and share what it’s like to see people, to learn from them, and to hold both the good and the bad with an open heart.