Dilemma at bedtime on March 13: Should I set my alarm for 2:00 a.m. so I could witness the lunar eclipse? Normally, there would have been no question. I need take only seven or eight steps once I roll out of bed to be on the open-to-the-sky porch that adjoins my bedroom. The forecast called for clear skies. And a total lunar eclipse happens only once every couple of years.
Why in the world wouldn’t I set the alarm???
Because the lower left quadrant of my body hurt all over. Hurt as in it was agony just to turn over in bed, let alone put my feet on the floor. Hurt as in every step I’d taken for the past several days made me want to cry out. Hurt in that I’d made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for first thing Friday morning to see if he could shed light on what was wrong. I needed to get up before dawn. Why hurt my leg even further and make myself extra-tired by working a moon-watch into the plans?
Because the eclipse was big-deal event that millions of people all over the western hemisphere would be watching with baited breath. I hated to be left out.
Also, it just so happened to be taking place on “pi day,” which I never knew was a thing until just a few years ago. In 1988, physicist Larry Shaw of the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco realized that not only did pi–the number that begins with 3, 1 and 4 and goes on forever and that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter–corresponds with March 14. That date is the birthday of Albert Einstein, who used pi in many of his scientific theories. So why not make an extra-special day of it, Shaw reasoned, a day when people talk not only about Einstein and infinite numbers but also eat pie?
That’s pie with an “e.”
But perhaps I’ve veered slightly off the subject, which was supposed to be the total lunar eclipse. After much internal debate, I decided to go ahead and set my cell phone alarm for 2:00 since it’s close to the time I typically get up for my middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom anyway. Might as well kill two birds with one stone and look at the moon while I was awake. So as not to confuse my phone or myself, I set my old-school Timex analog alarm clock, which for many decades has taken a licking but keeps on ticking, for 5:30 so I could make it to my doctor’s appointment in time.
Two o’clock came and the cell phone started beeping. Groaning, I rolled onto my left side and turned it off. Groaning even louder, I swung my feet onto the floor and reached for the sweatshirt I’d left beside the bed. I pulled it on and took seven excruciatingly painful steps to the door that leads to the porch before realizing I shouldn’t go outside barefoot because (1) it was cold and (2) the porch has splinters. So I took some additional excruciatingly painful steps back to the closet, where I stepped into my Crocs and then went outside.
There—tens of thousands of miles above me in the western sky–was the full moon, completely covered by Earth’s shadow and glowing an eerie reddish-orange. It was absolutely, positively worth getting up for, no matter how badly I was hurting.
As it turns out, I have sciatica, nerve pain that originates in the lower back and radiates down the leg. I’d heard of it but never in a million years dreamed it would ever afflict me. I’m told that the best way to deal with sciatica is physical therapy and Aleve and time. Also, methinks it couldn’t hurt to eat pie every day until I’m well.
In case you’re wondering, apple and key lime are my favorites.
(March 22, 2025)