There Was an Eclipse Over My Backyard

Seven years ago this August, I wrote the following in my blog post about driving to Carbondale, Illinois, with my family to watch the 2017 eclipse:

I don't know what mood I'd be in if I didn't know that there's another total solar eclipse coming in seven years, but there is one coming, and I am buoyant. Better yet, Friends, my town is in the path of totality. 

Lemme just repeat that: MY TOWN IS IN THE PATH OF TOTALITY. MY HOUSE WILL SEE AN ECLIPSE!!!

You can come stay in a tent in my backyard, and I'll haul out the lounge chairs. The little kid, who will be graduating from high school the next month, will decorate us eclipse-themed doughnuts. The big kid, home from college for the weekend, will read and ignore us. And we'll have another powerful encounter that's beyond belief, in just seven years.

The little kid, one month from graduating high school, scored her homemade sourdough loaves with sun shapes for us. The big kid, home from college for the weekend, worked on her Environmental Science essay instead of a novel. All the out-of-town guests stayed in hotels instead of tents, but we did have the lounge chairs, sidewalk chalk, basketball and cornhole, and jump ropes out.

And my house, and all who stood on the driveway outside it, did see a total eclipse!

I played around with both my camera's phone and my Canon DSLR with this sun filter that I impulse-bought a couple of weeks prior. They both worked pretty well, but I was so worried about spending all my time fooling with photos instead of being in the moment that I didn't really use either to their full potential, and somehow, even with a sun filter and the sky going dark, I managed to over-expose every single photo.

Ah, well. The eclipse is happening somewhere in the middle of that white light and lens flare!

Here's the altar to Zeus we'd been working on all the previous week. Everyone in the family contributed nice things from their personal collections, and we lit the candle and incense daily while telling each other how much we appreciate the wonders of the universe and wouldn't it be nice to see the majesty of Zeus in an eclipse.

Trusting in the power of Zeus hadn't been enough to quell my fervent and rabid anxiety about the weather, however, and my regular eclipse anxiety dreams ratcheted up to a fever pitch during the full week of regular downpours we got prior to the eclipse. I dreamed the weather was overcast, I dreamed I got the day wrong, I dreamed it was raining and I couldn't go somewhere else because the car didn't work. One night I even dreamed that I saw the eclipse and then forgot what I'd seen the second it was over--I mean, what on earth?!?

One last downpour the night before the eclipse might have finished me off if I hadn't been distracted by the Trashion/Refashion Show, but thankfully, the day of the eclipse couldn't have been a more perfect day. Praise be to Zeus! 

I did miss, a little bit, the 2017 camaraderie of hanging out together in a parking lot, but spending a beautiful eclipse day in and out of our own house was objectively a lot more convenient. We had everything from Sun Chips and Cosmic Brownies to Oberon Eclipse beer on offer, and the yard toys got more love than they'd seen in the past five years or more. I even found the Spotify playlist I'd made for the 2017 eclipse and yep. It still rocks!

How magical to have one more beautiful day to play with yard toys and draw with chalk pastels with my daughters!

And imperceptibly, the sky darkened:

Did I get a sunburn right smack full on my face on this day?

Why, yes. Yes, I did.

My camera looks like it's set up to do a way better job than it did. Oh, well...

Proper exposure is for calmer people than I!

Just like seven years ago, our shadows became delightfully sharp as the light source grew smaller. You can't tell from the photo (SIGH!!!), but you can see every strand of the kid's hair in that shadow, and when she turned her eclipse glasses sideways, you could see the paper-thin shadow, deep black, of the cardboard frames.

At one point my college kid was reading the inside of the eclipse glasses and said to me, "You're looking away every three minutes, right?"

ME: "Um... Wut."

Because here is literally me for four entire hours:

Notice the cones at the bottom of my driveway to keep random people from pulling in and running us all over. Traffic wasn't crazy busy, but it was busy enough!

My kid literally had to Google it right then and be all, "Okay, our glasses are certified so you don't *really* have to look away every three minutes, but I think you should anyway." It's been a week, though, and I don't seem to have a blind spot in the center of my vision (...yet), so I think I'm good!

Look at the light around 3:00!

Check out the lens flare at 4:00 to see what the eclipse ACTUALLY looked like, grr. Even upside-down, the lens flare did a better job of photographing my eclipse than I did!

Here's the light at 3:04, including the neighbor's automatic outdoor lights. Check out that horizon!

And here's what we're all looking at!

It wasn't quite the same experience as in 2017. In 2017, when the Moon eclipsed the Sun, I was SHOCKED. I don't think anything can prepare you for that visceral feeling the first time you see a total eclipse. This time wasn't *as* shocking--although I think it always will be somewhat shocking, because the human mind, at least MY human mind, can barely comprehend it--but it was still beyond anything I've ever seen, wondrous and awe-inspiring, and beholding it remains, again, one of the best moments of my life. 

And again, just like in 2017 although it was nearly twice as long, it was over far too soon:

The waning of the eclipse was a great time to fool around with various pinhole projectors and lenses and my colander:

I was a little disappointed that the chickens hadn't seemed to react at all--they always put themselves into their coop at night, and I'd been looking forward to seeing them march themselves inside when the light reached some threshold known only to them--but I think the whole thing just happened too fast. 

The shadows were still predictably delightful, however:

Luna didn't do anything weird, either, but she also hadn't during the 2017 eclipse. She just hung out with us and wore her eclipse glasses like a good citizen scientist:

I watched through my own glasses (still not taking a break every three minutes, oops) until the Moon had completely finished its transit and every speck of the Sun was back in place, and then I made myself an enormous sandwich, tossed it, the rest of a bag of Sun Chips, a Cosmic Brownie, and an Oberon Eclipse beer into a bag, grabbed the rolly suitcase that I hadn't unpacked yet, hollered for the college kid, and by 5:00 we were in bumper-to-bumper--smooth but bumper-to-bumper!--traffic back to her college, where she had a science lab the next day that mustn't be missed. 

Squeezing in four more hours of kid-time, listening to Gastropod episodes and debating the deliciousness of every fruit we've ever tried, was the BEST way to continue this perfect day, and the ending was also the best possible ending: me in my jammies in a hotel room, face massively sunburned, noshing a giant sandwich (on homemade sourdough bread, no less), chips, brownie, and beer, casually starting the first chapter of a fantasy novel I'd been eager to try, and you'll never guess what I found on the hotel TV:

And just like that we circle back around to my Titanic Special Interest right in time for its 112th anniversary!

And don't worry, because now that the eclipse is over, my anxiety dreams have made a smooth transition to the next big thing on my list. Last night, I dreamed that I was traveling with my kid and lost her and couldn't find her and she was in danger. Sending her off to college is going to be SO FUN FOR ME!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!