By Daniel Dunaief
Ah, the benefits of an older bladder.
Granted, that’s not generally the case. Usually, I get up in the middle of the night, realizing that the dream that involves the search for a bathroom is my brain’s way of telling me that I need to urinate in real life.
I shift my weight slightly toward the floor, hoping that the rocking motion of my body doesn’t move the bed so much that I wake my wife or the cat sleeping on her, who sometimes sees my movement as a starter’s gun to race toward the table in the laundry room to devour another can of the same food he eats every day.
I slide my feet off the bed and try not to step on our huge dog, who moves around often enough that he could easily be that furry thing under my feet. My toes can’t always tell whether that’s him or just the softer part of the inside-out sweatpants I’ve been wearing for a week. I also try to avoid the other cat, whose tail is like a spring waiting for me to step on so he can shriek loudly enough to wake my wife and terrify the other cat and the dog.
When I reach the bathroom, I try to urinate into the bowl but away from the water to avoid any splashing sound. I retrace my steps back to the bed, hoping the safe places to step on the way out from the bed are still safe on the return.
This past week, the bathroom routine gave me the opportunity to look at a rare event. I watched the extended lunar eclipse, which was the longest it’s been in 580 years. I crept out to the hallway to view it through a window, hoping I didn’t have to go out in the cold to catch a glimpse of Earth’s shadow. I was also concerned that the dog, even at 3 a.m., would fear that he was missing out on something and bark, negating my efforts to enjoy the eclipse in silence.
I was amazed at the shadow that slipped slowly across the moon. I took an unimpressive photo that captured the yin and yang of the light and shadow.
The next morning, I ran into some neighbors on my routine walk with my dog.
After saying how they’d stayed up all night to watch this rare event — they are retired and don’t have any time pressure most days — they started to recount their evening.
“I was tempted to dress in black and howl while I watched it,” the man said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Well, you know, I figured as long as I was up, the neighbors on the other side who think it’s OK to play basketball at 11:30 p.m. should know I was awake and active.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Yeah, and the other day, they had a party and threw beer bottles over the fence into our backyard. It took until late in the day for them to pick them up.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “Sorry to hear that.”
As I walked back with my dog, who was eager for his post-walk breakfast, I realized we had never discussed the sights from the night before.
Sleep deprivation overshadowed a discussion of the observation of the Earth’s long shadow.
As for me, I was, for the first time, grateful for the momentary need to pee. The evening and the morning interaction that followed brought to the fore a collision of the mundane and the magnificent.
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