My hostas have survived construction. Also the hydrangea, the big white ones with blooms the size of basketballs. I carefully dug the hydrangea up and put them in pots, covered them with straw and watered them off and on. The hostas I transplanted, neglected and hoped for the best.
Both seem to have weathered the winter, big old work boots and harsh treatment and I expect them to make a full recovery.

The house is almost done, or done enough I had friends over for a quick viewing. They were only allowed in new part of the house, since the rest of the house looks much like I imagined Ebenezer Scrooge’s storeroom–dark, dank, dusty and covered in cobwebs. Nine of us from our girls’ group made it to town for lunch on Monday. Only Patty, vacationing in Hilton Head, or making her way back home to Florida, missed it. Linda came from St. Louis, Julie from Bardstown, Janet came from work.

The rest of us gathered at Ruth Ann’s and talked over each other, ate, and ate some more, enjoying her new digs — so much more put together than mine — and I swear it felt like a holiday. I think it may be the first time since COVID and our various retirements from employment that we have gotten together in an impromptu fashion. It was fun.

And then, our old high school pal, Kathi, joined us for a little bit, since she and Nancy drove down from Louisville together. Kathi spent a couple of days with her sister while Nancy stayed with me and cracked the whip. It was awful. Productive, but awful. Home organization is never my strong suit, so I have sat, overwhelmed, with the chaos, and Nancy took charge and helped me put stuff back where it belongs, she folded clothes and made me sweep.

I have other gifts. I was able to come up with all sorts of really cool things for the house as it was being renovated–a charging station in a drawer, heated bathroom floor, night lights in all the right places, even a fancy spa bidet toilet seat, with so many features it comes with a remote, which look like a gaming control. As impressive as it is, I can’t help thinking it looks a little like something you find in a “hospital supplies for the home” emporium.

But, regardless, I know a few of my pals checked it out, even though they did not admit to it.

Poor Kathi, who has not be subjected to all of us since high school, managed to survive the last hour or so of our visit when she came to pick up Nancy for the ride home. I had to create some makeshift seating, since I have only a sectional in the new big room. But we worked it out.

At one point, I think, I hopped into my new bathtub to demonstrate how I could actually get in and out of it, no small consideration. Fifteen minutes later I am still dry docked in the tub and I count five of us sitting and standing around in the bathroom chatting as usual, and not a one of us thinks it odd.

Well, maybe a little odd, but we kept on chatting anyway.

What started as lunch became late afternoon, and reluctantly the party broke up, but not before Kathi mentioned her niece, Stacy, is a faithful reader of this column. I had Kathi repeat this story to Margaret, who can barely stand to hear these kinds of compliments about me and my writing, so I go out of my way to make sure she hears them often. She squirmed and rolled her eyes while Kathi repeated it, and all our needs were met.

So, while there is still much to do here, I have hosted my first overnight guest, had a little impromptu gathering, and got complimented in earshot of Margaret. Stacy — forgive me if I have not spelled your name correctly — thank you for that, and I told your aunt, the next time she is in town, we will go to lunch.

It comes about so gradually, just about five minutes before totality, when we get a sense the world is darkening, but not like dusk. It is a flat, eerie kind of darkening, without dimension because there is no slant of light and shadow. A new experience altogether. It is noticeably cooler, the birds and insects make noise, almost frantic, and then fall silent.

We nestle in the crook of a split rail fence, a thing to remind us we are in the park of Lincoln’s boyhood home. Two cows and two horses graze in the low field just beyond it. As minutes tick toward totality the animals move lower in the field, settling under a tree. The horses stand nuzzling each other, one cow lies down, has been like that for a good half hour before the sky changes from day to night, and she stays down for thirty more minutes as the moon moves toward the far edge of the sun.

We sit in lawn chairs in this quiet lane, preferring it to the hubbub of the visitor’s center. We chat, someone plays with a colander as she tries to catch half-moon shadows on a white piece of paper. Off and on we don safety glasses and watch the black moon bite perfect arcs out of the bright gold sun. I try to photograph the image, so pristine and exact, but I never quite manage it and give up all together.

My record of the eclipse will best be kept inside, a memory to savor, not some far off glimpse of an image, should I ever scroll past it on some future phone.

When the moon finally covers the sun completely, the “diamond ring” shows to brilliant effect. We take off our glasses and stare for the only minute or two it will be safe. Then, it just seems dark, like evening has fallen, but not like the darkest night. There is a golden, almost red glow hovering at the horizon, and not only in the West, but all around.

As darkness descends, we hear in the distance a swell of whoops and hollers where the crowds have gathered in the obvious places, parking lots, rest areas. Like cheering the home team.

Totality only lasts two minutes, then the world–not the sky–but the earth from the ground up, begins to lighten. The quality of light is odd, and then it doesn’t seem odd anymore, as if this will be the wattage of the sun from now on.

A bulb that has dimmed.

Maybe it is because all the anticipation is gone, or now we know what we are looking at, so it isn’t as unsettling as before. Even so, something big has happened, and the world seems off for the rest of the afternoon.
Some find it humbling, a sense of insignificance, the way we are small.

Perhaps I felt that in 2017 when I first experienced the darkness of a total eclipse, the way the moon obliterated the sun and the light with it. And yet, the moon is tiny compared to our sun. It is distance that gives it stature, makes the eclipse possible. No, I feel a kinship with this big thing, a sense of purpose of what my job is here. And that job is to do nothing but open up to it. Protect my eyes, look up when it is safe, let a sigh or a whisper escape my lips. Keep the right distance. Check on the cows.