EDLM: April 8, 2024
Eclipse Day! “I love totality!”
Sometime during the night, I wake up to a cry. My initial thought is the cats are fighting, but then I remember the two-year-old in the other room. We are sleeping in our guest room while my brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew are in our huge bedroom. It’s their first time to our house in Muncie. It’s a cry that fittingly seems like it isn’t still baby but is not quite full child.
L. doesn’t cry long, but after that, I can’t get back to sleep for a while. It’s funny because part of the reason is that I know it’s diary day and my narrator turns on.
Our little grey cat, G. has been sleeping on the bed with us, but the other two S. & N. haven’t been seen since the children arrived around 4 pm. They’ve never seen children. Around 5:30 am, they come see us in the guest room after meowing briefly at the main bedroom. They are very happy to have found us. We go back to sleep until about 7:45 when the family starts moving.
I bought a Muncie Map Company eclipse shirt with the purple hippo on it. The size was wrong and ended up too big for me, but I’m going to wear it anyway.
After showering, I head out and get the family donuts and donut holes from the freezer. My wife made really fancy donuts a week or so ago. The best was an Earl Grey lavender lemon one. We also made some donut holes with cinnamon and sugar for the kids. Everyone is also eating watermelon and bananas. I make myself a bagel since I’ve already had a lot of the donuts.
My sister-in-law is teaching my niece, F. (age 6), to do a little craft to keep her occupied. It involves some kind of simple sewing, stuffing, and decorating a felt animal. After breakfast the kids are playing in the living room and G. the cat is around. F. has been so excited to see the cats, but S. and N. are back to hiding. She’s excited to see G. though, and even gets to pet her a little. After the siblings are ready for the day, we go outside to enjoy this beautiful day. I had this toy space shuttle tent that we set up for the kids. And F. is picking violets from the yard. There’s a bit of sibling jealousy happening as my nephew L. (just turned 2) needs his mom at the same time F. wants her attention. Poor little L. keeps tripping on the threshold of our sliding door where the track sticks up. He ends up with a bloody nose for a bit.
We decide to take a walk around the neighborhood. L. is having fun jumping in puddles along the side of the road from the poor Muncie drainage. F. complains that the walk is boring because we aren’t actually going anywhere. City girl! There are lots of neighbors out and about, clearly home for the eclipse. We stop at the free little library on our corner as we head back to the house.
My mother-in-law is having a flair up of bursitis or something similar and is in a lot of pain. The in-laws are staying at an Airbnb with E.’s cousin. Thankfully she gets into a walk-in clinic this morning and gets a cortisone shot and some pain meds. My in-laws and cousin-in-law arrive around lunchtime to join the chaos.
We often make a lot of food and freeze leftovers, so we have a freezer full of lunch options that I put in a Google Doc for everyone to order from. Cousin B. is sweet and goes around and collects everyone’s orders for me, while I work on heating things up. My sister-in-law is trying to make these paper plate things that hold the eclipse glasses in place for the kids while F. is screaming at me to take a look at the felt craft that’s now complete.
After the chaos of nine different people getting leftovers, we head outside for the eclipse. It is absolutely gorgeous weather. We even put on some sunscreen (ironic?). Everyone here except my wife and I (and of course the kids) saw the full solar eclipse seven years ago when it went over my in-law’s house. They immediately told us they were going to visit us in 7 years, and soon I find out why. In the interim, Cousin B. has clearly been preparing. He sets out a white sheet to try and see the shadow bands. He sets out some brightly colored clothing for us to observe the change in the colors. And he sets up our Bluetooth speaker where he has both an app alerting us to special parts of the eclipse and has an eclipse playlist going.
The partial eclipse is fun to see with our glasses. The Ball State ones give a little more definition that the ones the family brought from last time so I’m glad I picked them up. The kids are playing around the yard, and everyone is just interacting and watching off and on. We play around with the colander to see how the shadows reflect the changes in the sun. It’s a pretty fun and chill vibe with the music and the company.
The app begins to alert us to how long until totality. The first major thing I notice is just how much the temperature is dropping. It’s getting darker, but the dark feels different than dusk or even just cloud cover. A breeze picks up. Colors do look different. It’s hard to even describe how. Muted? Even my bare foot seems like the color is just different. We silence the playlist so we can also hear the sounds. Or rather the lack of sounds as birds that were chirping just minutes before go silent.
As the app signals it is only a few minutes from totality, we gather in our groups. My sister and brother-in-law gather the kids and sit in the grass as a family. My wife stands behind me with her arms around me. The app counts down from ten and tells us to take off our glasses.
And the whole world just gasps. Cheering from around the neighborhood. My eyes tear up. Involuntary awe. There’s at least one of the Bailey’s beads we see at about 6 o’clock. And sunrise colors all around the horizon. F. made up a song and sang “Totality, totality, I love totality!” I think we all agree.
Everyone said a total eclipse was remarkable and that partial eclipses don’t even compare, but you don’t know until you do. When we went to the planetarium yesterday the show had someone narrating his experience with a total solar eclipse. It sounded exaggerated. It wasn’t. Everything was just how he described it, but also simply indescribable. Yet shared by everyone who has the privilege to witness it.
The app tells us to get our glasses back out and when to put them back on. There’s a flair of light, and just like that, everything starts moving in the other direction. The light comes back. The birds chirp again. The temperature returns to what it was.
As totality is gone, the family scatters. Some going in to rest or snack, some still watching. F. builds a fairy house and decides to fill all the acorn tops she can find with water for the fairies. L. naps on his father’s shoulder. As we get to where things are almost back to normal, my father-in-law and cousin head to Menards just because they don’t have those where they live. Another Midwest phenomenon, I guess.
I was going to make dinner, but the weather so nice, and I don’t want to. So, I suggest we go sit outside at Elm Street. We all agree, and I make sure the patio is open. We get there around 5:30, and they say it will be about a 30-minute wait. As we wait, F. is doing races up and down the big ramp outside the building while we all chat. We finally get seated and there is only one other table of people outside, so I’m guessing they had to wait for another server to get there at 6 pm. We get settled and ordered, but it takes over another hour to get our food. We get a group photo by the wall with the wings. It’s after 7pm when our food arrives, and they got my order wrong. Thankfully, we put in the kids order first, so at least they ate but they are getting tired and fussy, especially L. We give the siblings our keys so they can go on back and get the kids put to bed while we pay, and I scarf down my BLT which they finally bring out. It’s a good thing the environment is nice, and day is beautiful because the food is just bad. We’d already warned everyone that they’d been eating at the best restaurant in Muncie (our house with my wife’s cooking).
Since my mother-in-law is still in a lot of pain, we say good-bye to them in the driveway and they head back to their Airbnb. When we get back, N. (the youngest cat) sees the kids and runs right under their bed, and I have to drag her out while she freaks out. Good thing we trimmed her claws before company! After the kids are in bed, we hang out with the siblings some more. They all have some Prosecco, and I have a small gummy as that is my chosen substance over alcohol these days. S. actually comes and hangs out in the living room with us and lets the siblings pet her, so seems like she’s settling in a bit. It’s good to catch up with just them, and we realize we may all be in Chicago the same weekend for different events this fall.
We head off to bed around our usual time, if not our usual bed. Tomorrow our household returns to our normal every day, but it’s been an amazing disruption.