On Being Alone

55 this morning, cool, clear, perfect Fall day. Downside: no rain from what was predicted, and none in sight until Sunday. So I am back to watering my flowers, trying to hold on to these last late blooms.

Busy morning, getting everything taken care of before I sit down to read your blogs and have a cup of coffee. I dropped Larry off at the airport, so he is in Orlando with his family, helping out however might be needed with his ill relatives.

Which means, of course, that I must pick up his chores: take out trash, feed the cat and dogs, feed and water the rabbits and chickens. All of that I did earlier, then went on to laundry, sweeping the floors, cooking my breakfast--scrambled eggs with cheese, toast with strawberry jam--and watering some of my potted plants outside. After my break, I have mums to plant, and I need to move the sprinkler to another part of the flowerbeds. Then I will make lemon squash bread for the freezer and paint a small table. And then? It will be time for another round of critter care. 

So my days, while Larry is away, will be even busier than usual. On my way home yesterday I stopped at my favorite thrift and picked up a stack of novels for ten cents each, so I have plenty of reading material for the evenings.

When I posted on Facebook about Larry being away, I noted that this will be the longest time I have been alone in my home in all my 72 years. As a child, I was surrounded by siblings, and at a very early age I was changing diapers and looking after the younger ones. I married at 17 and had my first child that year, and 3 more in the next 4 years, so I was never alone in those days. When the youngest of those boys was 12, I had another son by my second husband, so after the first "crop" grew up and moved out, I had my little boy to care for, and of course my husband too. The youngest left home around 2005, coming back a couple times, but still basically out on his own, so it has been Larry and I here since then, with many visits from our large family. 

But through all those years, I was seldom alone more than  a day. I made many trips during my storytelling and library careers, traveling across the country sometimes, always in the company of fellow tellers or librarians, and I made road trips too, but while I might have been alone in the car or at night, I was always with people during the day.

I used to actually enjoy my long, 100+ mile round trip commute to my library job, just for the solitude in the car during the journey. I would listen to books on CD, or the radio, or music. I would create stories, practice stories and ballads, even write poems in my head as I drove. During the years of that commute, I drove over a millon miles, most of those spent in creative thought. Eventually, though, the drive wore on me, and I grew tired of fighting the winter weather. It was a relief to give it up, but I missed those quiet hours.

Some people read my Facebook post as meaning I would be lonely, but that was not what I meant. Yes, I will miss Larry, but I am happy to have some time for just me, to re-visit perhaps those hours of creative thinking I used to enjoy. Who knows, maybe I'll write a poem or two, something I have done so lttle in the past couple years that sometimes I wonder if I still have any poems left in me. Everyday life tends to crowd my brain with to-do lists, leaving little space for anything more. I am not complaining, mind. There is value in living in the moment, in being involved in endeavors that produce immediate, concrete results. There is also value in leisure, in quite, in solitude, and I have missed that.

Larry's sister is much better. She is able to sit up and now recognizes people again. There were a few scary days while the doctors struggled to get the right drug combination to combat the e. coli infection in here blood, as well as deal with the pulmonary embolism in her lung, and a couple other issues she had developed. She had been caring for her husband as he has been going through chemo for pancreatic cancer, and I think she just wore down. They are neither of them spring chickens. 

So off I go now to get my plants in the ground, and enjoy this beautiful day. I hope you have as nice as day where you are. Leaving you with photos of my late-blooming roses. Their scent is pure ambrosia, but you will have to imagine that.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.