Home Alone
October 29, 2009
Thought I would be writing many more posts, loyal as Julie on her Julia kick in the eponymous movie. But I’ve barely managed a bi-monthly entry. First time however, I’ve ever actually used the word eponymous in a piece of writing, or two eponymous movies in one post.
He is gone for a week. The house is silent, wrapping me in comfort me, soft as the down quilt I’m burrowed beneath as I write. There is no TV blaring; no other energy humming but mine. After 25 years at home and the past five completely to myself during the week, having him home 24/7 has been a strain. Correction, he’s home now 24/7; I’m only home 24/4 thanks to a job I began back in February. The strain is not having my accustomed solitude.
Last night a girlfriend came over to dinner. I put together a meal quick quick — soup salad baked apples. I set the table pretty, perked up the flowers bought last Saturday. I put on a Billy Joel CD and as the soup simmered I rock and rolled around the house a la Meredith and Christina. Dog in dirt, pig in clover. Whatever your metaphor, I reveled like a teenager having the whole house to herself.
I feel like I am getting to know my house again, a friend from whom I had temporarily parted. I hear the ticking of the various clocks, the shifts and groans of the modern wonders of comfort — furnace, water heater — the small creaks of the floorboards as I walk room to room.
The joy is temporary, as he returns in six days. And I do realize that my solitude is joyful precisely because it is indeed temporary.
