Don’t stare at the sun like Trump and me

Although I am a mother, I am, first and foremost, a human being — and not always a good one, at that. I can be disorganized, stubborn, and impulsive; I’m not always a good listener, I’m strong-willed, and opinionated, impatient, and easily frustrated.

Being a human being is hard. I keep practicing, but I’m not all that sure that I’m improving.

My oldest son is 14 and both book-smart and practical, analytical and methodical. He likes order and quiet, routine and structure. I have no idea how he ended up with a mother like me, but I suspect our differences were designed to help each other grow. Or drive one another crazy.

We were both wildly excited about the eclipse — me in an “It’s magic!” kind of way, him in a “It’s science!” kind of way (these two opposite outlooks pretty much sum up our entire personalities).

We had talked about it for months in advance, I had even planned to take a family road trip to a state that experiences totality until I realized that school would be back in session by then.

And yet, somehow, despite all of this enthusiasm and advance planning, I never bought solar eclipse glasses. In fact, I never really even considered it until the morning of the eclipse, which is bizarre for someone who had been so excited to experience it, but pretty typical for a borderline professional procrastinator.

“I’m afraid I’m going to look at the sun,” I told him on the morning of the big event.

“Why would you do that?”

“Well, first of all because I don’t want to miss it, and second, because all of the news reports telling me not to make me feel compelled to do it.”

“Okay, ma,” he said, with an exasperated sigh. “First of all, school gave us all glasses, so if you can wait until pick-up you can use mine. But more importantly — the news is trying to help you not go blind. It’s a little different than bossing you around…”

“I know, but I wish they’d just calm down about it.”

He gave me a sideways glance and resumed packing up his backpack. “Well, please try to control yourself. It’s actually pretty easy to not stare into the sun.”

I picked him up later that day and he handed me the glasses.

“It’s incredible. You have to look,” he said.

“OK, but one of my eyes kind of hurts because I looked a little bit ago, just real quick.”