Home Alone
October 5, 2009
For the first time in what seems like eons I am home alone. The way I used to be for over two decades. The kids would leave for school. He would leave for work and peace would settle over the house. Quiet in every corner. The faint sound of a clock ticking in one room. Or the distant drone of lawn mowers or snowblowers filtering through walls and windows. But no radios. No TV’s. No music. Just me and my computer working on the day’s article, cottoned in the simple stillness and quiet that so many mothers crave and devour like warm sweet custard.
I do not have to be at work until noon. He is out getting a flu shot. I begged off for good reason and had a morning’s worth of errands to run before heading to work. But it is quiet here. All the more quiet and all the more charged for its absence. This unexpected respite of silence wraps its arms around me. I quit my fingers on the keyboard. Close the laptop and simply sit and drink in the silence.
