Cancer Chronicles Twenty-One

Usually my wife and I miss out on these once-in-a-lifetime astronomical events, like the Blood Red Moon on Sunday night.
We live in Florida and, as in Camelot, it seems to mostly rain at night. If there is a spectacular comet dashing across the sky we miss it because of the cloud cover. Sometimes it’s just too late at night and we don’t want to stay up. This was even true when we were younger living in Texas. And if we did see some configuration of stars and planets lining up in some oddball fashion, they would look like some fuzzy dots to us anyway.
This time, my wife seemed more interested in the lunar eclipse than usual. This particular eclipse would not occur again until the 2030s, and we had a mutual unspoken acknowledgement that we probably wouldn’t be around at that time.
Early in the evening, our hopes were dampened a bit by a noisy thunderstorm. As the little dogs cuddled close to my son, I conceded we were out of luck again.
“Well,” she replied, “let’s see what it looks like in an hour.”
The rain had, indeed, stopped in an hour and I walked out on the driveway to see if the clouds had parted. I didn’t even bother to put my shoes on. My socks were pretty thick. My feet didn’t get that wet. No luck. I tried again thirty minutes later. Still no luck. It was getting past time for the spectacular show in the sky, but I decided to go out one more time.
When I looked up the clouds parted and there the Blood Red Moon was. Well, one side was almost white and the rest of it looked a little washed out, but it was still tinged with red. I went to the door and yelled for my wife to hurry up if she wanted to see it.
Now this is the good part. I watched my wife, dressed in her long, baggy T-shirt, walk faster than she had moved in six months to make it out of the house to see the eclipse. By the time she joined me on the driveway the clouds had come together. She leaned into me and put her arms around my shoulders to hold herself up. That burst of energy had just about worn her out.
Then the clouds parted once more, and she saw the moon. I put my arms around her waist to give her more support, and we both watched the eclipse that won’t happen again for twenty years. We felt so close. We shared an event in the dark. Our feet were wet, but we didn’t care.
Take that, cancer. You didn’t keep us from making another wonderful memory. You lose again.

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