Last night I stayed in Kansas City with my friend Deb and her boyfriend, David, and this morning Deb’s sister, Aimee, joined us for sugar, carbs, coffee, and–after all that–other celestial wonders. If you haven’t heard already, there was a total eclipse today. I’ve been a little nervous this week that I’d “miss it,” but when I woke up this morning to cinnamon rolls, I thought, Screw the eclipse. This is better. Fortunately, I didn’t have to choose one or the other. And I have to admit–the eclipse was amazing. As one t-shirt said, it was “totality awesome.”

Feel free to roll your eyes.

In anticipation of traffic, we hit the road about nine, after David checked his kids out of school for a “once in a lifetime” event.” Honestly, if you held a gun to my head (please don’t), I couldn’t tell you exactly where we went. I just know it was about an hour away and was in the path of totality, meaning the sun would be completely covered up by the moon. As a bonus, the moon as ALSO completely covered up by clouds.

I mean, that’s basically what happened. As soon as we got to the farm we were going to (David said it belonged to like a family member of a friend of a family member), it started raining. A lot. So Deb and Aimee and I played Uno with the kids (in the car) while David took a work call. I normally don’t like card games, but I’ll say this–they’re more fun when you win and children cry.

I’m kidding. No one cried.

Eventually, it stopped raining, and the eclipse began. We still had a lot of clouds, but we were able to see most of the first half of it. Part of me actually thought having the clouds was exciting. It was like playing hide-and-seek. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Another part of me was disappointed that we didn’t see the entire thing. This is a big deal, I thought, doesn’t the weather get that? But what do you do? You can’t make the clouds go away, shoo them off to another state the same way you’d encourage a fly to leave your cheeseburger. Still, even with the clouds completely covering the moon completely covering the sun, it was pretty amazing at the point of total eclipse. Except for the horizon, the sky was dark. The air got colder. The birds stopped chirping.

I ate Cool Ranch Doritos.

Like everyone else, Aimee and I took pictures. Then when the sun started to shine again, people clapped. Honestly, it was a little half-hearted, but I’m going to blame that on the clouds. But it still felt rather primal, this celebration of the idea that even when there are dark times, the light eventually breaks through.

The traffic showed up on the way home. David took a lot of back roads, but I have never seen so many cars amongst the cornfields. It was like Field of Dreams. (If you build a total solar eclipse, they will come.) As David drove, it started raining again, and puddles of water cropped up along the highways. At one point, traffic came to a standstill because two lanes of traffic were trying to squeeze into one lane of traffic at the point where there was a small creek of water running across the road. Well, apparently David’s a badass who doesn’t mind driving on the shoulder. The next thing I knew, he was splashing through the water in the unoccupied lane, then off we went, a string of other cars behind us who just needed permission go against the grain.

This evening I’ve watched as photos and videos of the eclipse have flooded Facebook the way the rain in Kansas City is, even now, flooding the streets. Some of my friends have commented, “I wish I’d had a pair of glasses,” the same way I’ve thought, I wish I’d been somewhere with fewer clouds. I guess we all do that, tell ourselves our day would’ve been better IF, our lives would BE BETTER IF. And yet that’s something–and I personally hate to admit this in writing–that we can’t know for sure. We just can’t. No one has a crystal ball.

And no–a disco ball will not do.

What I do know is that I laughed a lot today. I haven’t seen Deb and Aimee in over five years, and both of them are hilarious. Maybe I didn’t see those crazy shadows on the ground during the total eclipse climax (or whatever it’s called), but I did reconnect with my friends over cinnamon rolls and Uno, and–let’s face it–that’s not something that happens every day. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert says, “The action is here.” I take that to mean that we can IF and WISH all day long, but that’s only half-living, something akin to the path of “partiality.” Of course, real life isn’t something you wish and dream about–it’s something that’s right in front of you. What’s more, it’s whole and complete just the way it is. So perhaps fully accepting and living what’s right in front of you could also be called the path of totality.