Eclipse Day

I live in the path of totality for the solar eclipse that happened yesterday. I also live in northeast Ohio, in one of the places with the most cloud cover in this area of the country.

When I headed to work yesterday morning, clouds covered the whole sky. But they cleared up (probably in answer to prayer), and it turned into an absolutely beautiful day. I kept thinking about this paragraph from The Fellowship of the Ring:

It ended up so sunny that I’m slightly sunburned from spending part of the day at the library’s table at the eclipse party in the park behind our building. And when the full eclipse happened, while there we no patrons in the library, those of us not working at the table got to go outside and watch it.

I didn’t take pictures myself, and I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the total eclipse. It was incredible, and I almost cried, and I’m so thankful I got to experience it. Pictures and descriptions truly are not the same, and many people have done a better job trying than I could.

But something else I found myself thankful for is that my coworkers are a fun group of people who I genuinely enjoyed getting to experience it with. We had a weird day of strange schedules and answering umpteen questions about whether we had eclipse glasses and watching something we might never see again, certainly not here. And it was chill and pleasant, smoothing even the annoying parts into a fun and memorable day.

That hasn’t always been the case here, and sometimes it still takes me by surprise. I’m very grateful for a place to work where I enjoy being around my coworkers.