Celestial events

I went outside last night around ten thirty to see the lunar eclipse. It had started, with the earth's shadow taking a bite of the moon's lower left quadrant. The sky was clear but there's a temporary cold snap in my area so I went back inside after a few minutes. An hour later, I found that I could see the moon from a skylight in the house, so I watched the last bit of the lunar surface fade to shadow from there. 
The moon gets a pinkish hue during these because the light hitting it is passing through the earth's atmosphere. I heard an astronomer describing it on the radio yesterday as it being like the light of a thousand sunsets. Poetic. 

The best lunar eclipse I ever saw was in 1985. I was living in Nagoya, Japan, and I didn't know it was going to happen. I was sitting on the balcony of the apartment I was living in enjoying the evening when I saw the moon getting shaded. Seeing it this way, I felt a little of the wonder and awe that people must have felt centuries ago. 
Watching it last night, I thought about how part of the reason people like watching things like it is that they happen rarely and the times between their occurrences can be long. I also thought about how many people like me, with multiple health conditions that will likely kill me in a year or two, regard every sunrise as a celestial event.