Noon eclipse day. Stock on. Bird bought after blood draw. How steady I am cutting the onion, the potatoes! I find the joint between thigh and breast easily as my heart is light, my knife sharp.

I walk the dog and I am not alone. Newton is a construction site and still I am grateful. My shirt is white, my heart intact, my teeth stay in my head. I am walking the dog in beauty, finding the joint in beauty. Picking up the catalpa pods that fell last fall, I am feeling useful if a bit stiff. The ends of the green beans get swept into the stock pot, but one rogue bean entire tries to hide in my apron pocket. My apron is triangular, drapey and in it I look like a small circus tent with feet.

And yet I am grateful. How one sunny warm day will change everything. Two nights ago, furnace on the blink (I told you so, dear husband), two heating pads fired up on full, I curl under blankets and wonder will I ever be warm again and then this day. This day, when the moon will pass between us and the sun — spooky, amazing, and rare. We won’t get totality, because I like my miracles to be convenient, but soon we will be in the presence of a kind of magic anyway, a magic that informs us that we are not the boss.

What a relief to not be the boss!

Do you have a high powered charging cable? Some days that’s all that matters. Today walking the dog three steps behind my husband (because: my hip. because: he doesn’t take instruction well), I feel how thoroughly I am like my mother! Today she inhabits me in my gray button down shirt, white sneakers, short hair — Mom in her relaxed Florida phase.

Will I get a relaxed phase? One where I stop giving a shit what other people think? One where it is permissible to exhale exhale exhale knowing the Nazis are crawling back under their rocks? A phase when some important things have been finished and I’m ready to do other things —things possibly important and possibly not?

The dog sinks to the floor in an exhale. There’s a lesson in that. One about surrender.

Gravity waves are a thing — did you know? And did you know that they are hard to study because no one can predict when they will appear with one notable exception. They are always present during eclipses.

So at 2:15 or so I’ll sit on the front lawn and don my glasses, and open up everything of who I am but effortlessly, like the dog sinking to the floor with a sigh. Is that even possible? The world will go slightly dark and we will be changed momentarily by gravity waves.

Meanwhile the chicken stock boils and there will be risotto with three kinds of mushrooms tomorrow, which is another testament to my mother who never prepared risotto but was an excellent cook.

This body. This day. A braid of: my mother, my own gladness, the relief at not being the boss, the smell of chicken stock on the stove. A short yelp of hallelujah is in order.