Like Engie, I was not into eclipse hype. Bad weather last time, other life things unfolding, etc.
Then on Friday, I got an email from Cooper's school saying they had glasses for all students and would be bringing the kids outside to see it, and I made a cursory attempt to find glasses, thinking everyone else would probably enjoy the experience, too. The ones on Amazon were supposedly not trustworthy, and I didn't want to actually go anywhere during a busy weekend to find them, so my interested faded fast. I thought maybe I could snag a pair from Harry who had to tell freshmen about it for his astronomy class (the high school has a planetarium, and I still think this is just about the coolest thing ever), but then Ben wound up taking him to Eau Claire for the last day of the American Forensic Association national tournament so he could cheer on his future college speech team friends (and so Ben could see some of our oldest and dearest friends from around the country), and the eclipse again fell off my radar.
But! The day of eclipse dawned SUNNY, and Dorothy had 10:30 dismissal so teachers could do conference prep, and the next visible solar eclipse is in 20 years, and neither of my little girls will be little or will probably experience it with me, and suddenly! Tracking down glasses became my MISSION.
I called ALL OF THE LIBRARIES in a reasonable radius and all of the Hyvees. I called all of the HMOS who advertised distribution and Warby Parker and eye clinics and the high hchool. NO GLASSES, you guys. And people were answering the phone at various businesses with a curt "We are all out of eclipse glasses," so I was not the only idiot who waited until the last second.
Ben got a pair in the UW-Eau Claire admissions office, and the tournament had boxes of them. BUT EAU CLAIRE was CLOUDY. Madison was MOCKING ME with its sun.
I went to the astronomy department's homepage and found that they were distributing glasses on Library Mall for a 1-3pm watch party. I emailed my TAs and asked if anyone could grab an extra pair or 2 and put them in my mailbox, but the only response I got was crickets.
A few pages into my search, I saw a blurb from the UW Space Place, which is the public outreach arm of the astronomy department (all of our science departments do some sort of public outreach/community engagement and education as part of their mission, and it is so neat). They were selling glasses for $2 a pair starting at NOON on 4/8. FINALLY a distribution deadline I hadn't missed yet!
Dorothy and I picked Minnie up and went straight there (definitely out of the way and required highway driving, but I was on a mission, you guys). We joined a super long line that was luckily working its way up a staircase, so we had a place to sit. The woman in front of us was on her phone texting ad using FB Messenger and was apparently planning to buy glasses for everyone she knew. She even said to me, "It might not be worth your time to wait in this line," which I thought was weird because the line was long but not even out the door or anything.
At 11:57, a slim, stern-looking octogenarian volunteer came in with a cash box and a stack of glasses, walked down the stairs, unlocked the Space Place doors, and set herself up at a small table. The line moved efficiently, but when we neared the point of sale, we discovered that the volunteer was only letting each party buy 1 pair of glasses per person, and kids couldn't buy any. That was fine with me, but not with the woman in front of me. She tried to plead her case as the spokesperson for a group, but the volunteer was not messing around.
"What about my mother?" the lady in front of us asked. "She is a senior citizen and can't make it here. I want to buy a pair for my mom."
"Are you going to be with her today?" the volunteer asked.
The woman in front of me sensed a rule-bending coming, and relaxed her shoulders a bit. "I AM," she said, reaching her hand toward the stack of glasses.
The volunteer looked her straight in the eye. "Then you can share your pair with her," she said.
I WANTED TO SLOW CLAP.
We bought our pair of glasses and headed home for lunching and eclipsing. We kept darting out to the front porch to watch the moon's progression. Minnie never did quite figure out what she was seeing, and she kept trying to explain to me and Dorothy that what we said was the sun was CLEARLY the moon. Dorothy and I loved the creepy, Instagram-filter quality of the light and our short, black shadows. We thought about what we would be doing in 20 years, and Minnie piped up to ask if she'd be 18. I said she'd actually be 23 and wanted to know why she asked, and she said "WHEN I AM 18 MY MOM WILL BE AN OLD LADY," which I must have said to her, and it stuck, hilariously.
