Hi Sam! You mentioned being in Texas. Did you get to see the total eclipse?
I did! That's actually why we were in Texas.
I have wanted to see a full solar eclipse since I was about 20, but I've never had the combination of time and means -- couldn't afford it, or couldn't get to where it was total, or couldn't take the time to get there. So two years ago I saw one was coming and said, "this time I'm making it happen." Two days later R called and said, "Do you want to meet up in Texas for the eclipse?"
Our plans had to shift over time, and I won't lie, that was stressful for all of us. I had originally planned to ask R and his wife to chip in half for the rental place, but decided to just cover it myself because they're either divorced or in the end stages of the legal divorce proceedings and R isn't making much money. I remember my mother being poor and trying to take us on nice trips, and I can afford it. Baby U didn't exist when we made these plans and he's traveling with her without a partner for the first time, which has caused wrinkles for all of us (he couldn't get a rental car because he waited too long, so he took a Lyft to Fuckall Nowhere, Texas, like a 2 hour drive, and now has to try and get one in FaNoTX to get to his next stop in San Antonio). The rental was a little more intense and uptight than we anticipated but the people seemed nice in person. I have had Some Stress.
And honestly, it was all worth it.
I don't think a full solar eclipse is life changing for everyone the way some people say, but I do agree that partial eclipse simply doesn't compare. They're too different as experiences. When totality hit and we could see it hit, everyone gasped and was silent for a second and the burst into noise -- cheers, swearing, exclamations. I almost started crying and then began laughing instead because next to me R said "OH MY GOSH" and U echoed softly "oh my gosh" even though she's too young to understand what's going on and was looking at her sippy cup, not the eclipse. We just stood there in awe. We were in a kind of shock for a few hours after.
I'd been dropping some "hot from a PBS documentary" eclipse facts on an older woman before the event, at the little lunch party our host threw, and she'd taken to calling us William Shatner (R) and Carl Sagan (me) and from behind me, halfway through totality, she said, "Carl Sagan, you didn't tell me it would be like THIS."
In future, I will do any travel with R very differently, but it was worth it to see him and the baby and experience that with them.
Also having coparented a toddler for the weekend, I am again glad I don't want and never had kids. She's a joy, but she's a very dribbly joy.
