{"id":27767,"date":"2012-06-06T07:34:18","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T11:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=27767"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:47:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:47:22","slug":"the-transit-of-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=27767","title":{"rendered":"The Transit of Venus"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t need to read this New Yorker article<\/a> on the virtues of daydreaming to know that daydreaming leads to creative thinking.\u00a0 As a child, I often saw my father, a writer, half-napping on the couch, insisting I leave him alone because he was working.\u00a0 To anyone with a traditional work ethic, such behavior would have been viewed as absurd and lazy.\u00a0 But I think I understood what my father meant, and I completely understand now, as I have grown into a person who wakes up from half-sleeps with revelations, endings to stories I\u2019m writing, and solutions to difficult problems.<\/p>\n

I also daydream when I\u2019m fully awake. Too much, I would say.\u00a0 The events of this morning, for example, led me to daydream for hours.\u00a0 The result was revelatory, but I am now another day behind on my work.<\/p>\n

I was awake very early with my sons who wanted to see the transit of Venus, one of the rarest predictable solar events.\u00a0 In this event, Venus appears as a black dot on the sun \u00a0\u00a0The transits of Venus occur in pairs which are eight years apart.\u00a0 This happens less than once per century.\u00a0 The next transit won\u2019t take place until 2117.<\/p>\n

\"transit<\/a>
Image of transit taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The transit of Venus was supposed to be visible between sunrise and 7:30 a.m. today in Tel Aviv. My sons bought special glasses that would allow us to look at the sun and see Venus.\u00a0 The end of a long story is that I didn\u2019t see a black dot.\u00a0 My kids claimed they did, and I was happy for them.\u00a0 I, however, was left with a sinking feeling in my stomach and I didn\u2019t know why.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as if I\u2019ve been waiting years to see Venus in transit. I have never thought about it before and had my sons not brought home glasses, I would not have tried to see it.<\/p>\n

The reason for my bad feeling, I decided, \u00a0was simply the sense of disappointment over a missed opportunity. \u00a0No matter how much I beg the universe, there will not be another transit of Venus in my lifetime. \u00a0My mind roamed, then, and I thought about all sorts of missed opportunities, the what-ifs, and future opportunities I will likely miss thanks to my anxieties.\u00a0 Then I found myself back in time, in kindergarten, in the playground next to a play train that seemed to be made out of metal barrels without tops or bottoms.\u00a0 I was standing near the back of the train.\u00a0 I had a pair of glasses just like the ones my sons had today to look for Venus.\u00a0 My teacher stood to my right.\u00a0 My mother stood to my left.\u00a0 She had glasses, too.\u00a0 We were about to witness a solar eclipse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sky changed from sunny to gray.\u00a0 It was a hot day, but I remember feeling cold.\u00a0 Teachers rushed children inside, worried they would look at the sun and damage their eyes.\u00a0 I was with my mother, so I was allowed to stay outside.\u00a0 We had our glasses.\u00a0 We were safe.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t feel protected.\u00a0 The way darkness had overtaken the day frightened me.<\/p>\n

My mother was diagnosed with MS that year.\u00a0 I can\u2019t recall the timeline of events.\u00a0 Was it before the eclipse or after?\u00a0 It could have been that very day.\u00a0 In my memory, which, without the transit of Venus, might have been forgotten forever, my mother is smiling.\u00a0 She wants to share the eclipse with me.\u00a0 To her it\u2019s not a fright, but a wonder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have only a handful of memories of my mother in good health.\u00a0 And perhaps in this lies the explanation for my sinking feeling of missed opportunity, the opportunity to be raised by my mother.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*On a lighter note: While searching for Venus we sang the Police song, “King of Pain”. \u00a0“There’s a little black spot on the sun today…” \u00a0Thanks, Mike, for leading us into a burst of song.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bmus83mQ8z0[\/youtube]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Transit of Venus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My mother was diagnosed with MS that year. I can\u2019t recall the timeline of events. 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