I don't want a job, I want to be a Lizard
Anti-capitalist musings from an overworked single mother
I’m looking at pictures of Monday’s total solar eclipse and I feel a pang of jealousy towards anyone who had the honor of seeing it in person—thrilled for them, sure, but jealous just the same.
I had every intention of taking my kid on a road trip, of camping out somewhere in the path of totality, of sharing this once in a lifetime astronomical event together just before he leaves the nest. We’re not a vacation family so much as we are a camping family; a relic of being raised by immigrant parents with little means, perhaps, but one that I embrace, wholeheartedly. We’ve gone on so many camping trips together that we’ve got our routine down to a science: first, we set up the tent together, then Isaac takes charge of fire building while I set up the camp kitchen and prepare our fireside meal. After dinner we make s’mores and sit in our zero gravity chairs to gaze at the stars. Before switching off the lantern we play a game of Uno inside the tent, and fall asleep to the soundtrack of crickets or frogs, or against the vast silence of nature’s night.
But instead of the trip I’d hoped we’d take, instead of seeing the moon eclipse the sun into a ring of fire, I spent the entire day on my laptop, with a short break to look through my solar safety glasses and see about 30% of the sun eclipsed from Los Angeles. Lately, my workload has been staggering, not because I’m a workaholic—let’s be honest, I was probably a sloth in a previous life—but out of absolute necessity. I’m a single parent and an independent artist with no generational wealth, no child support, and no savings. A road trip to see a solar eclipse, in this economy? Not a chance.
It wasn’t until the next evening at dusk, while walking home from the public library beneath a waxing crescent moon—a barely-there delicate sliver of a lunar finger nail—did I realize that what I was feeling wasn’t actually jealousy, but grief.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Chronically Chill to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.