Eclipse 2017, Together in St. Joseph, Missouri

When I was 17, in my bed more often than not with a new and overwhelming chronic illness, I fixated on the upcoming total eclipse. I printed maps, charted the path of totality across their faces, and hung them on my wall. I read armchair expert books on cosmology and made a list of other rare celestial occurrences. It felt so important that in the chaos of life, everything could align for this miracle moment of the moon covering the immutable sun. It felt like proof of order as a possibility, even as a chaotic pain spread from my hips up into my neck and I lost something of myself. If, out of all the odds in the natural world, there could be this moment of impossible rightness, maybe the same was true in my life. I found the nearest point of totality in St. Joseph, Missouri, and pitched a road trip. My dad agreed, and we spent three days driving. We watched the slide of darkness from a strip mall parking lot through the window of his welding helmets. After seventeen minutes, the light was gray again, and I felt washed. I felt newly connected to myself, both to what I had lost and to the still-fresh potential of my life. On our drive home, my dad and I talked the way we always do, circling everything and nothing for hours and hours. This, too, was about connection. 

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"Eclipse 2017" measure 30x33 inches, and is made from cotton, sari silk, merino wool, handspun art yarn, felted wool. The twin panels hang from two hand-finished poplar dowels.