Spaces in Your Togetherness

Over the course of the last twenty-four hours I sorted through three closets worth of clothing and created a pile 5 feet high to give to charity. I did two loads of laundry, went grocery shopping, prepared all of our winter coats, scarves, mittens, hats and gloves and put away all lingering summer items in organized storage boxes. I rid my desk of a frightening stack of paperwork, I wrote ten thank you notes which are stamped and in my bag, ready for the mailbox. I called my parents, talked to my grandmother, cleaned the coffee maker, did six hours of work on two unwieldy projects, wrote, printed and readied four invoices, secured diapers, oiled the wood of the dining room table. I even watched one Daily Show and one Iron Chef, and last night--after two nights of feeling lousy--wrote an entry here.

How did I accomplish these feats of wonder, you may be asking yourself. Adrenaline? Heavy doses of caffeine? No. I've been on the herbal tea, and my adrenaline is on temporary leave. It is as simple as this: I was alone.

I used to be alone quite often, because I lived alone, or because Ben was traveling and I was home alone, but it never suited me well. There are things I like to do alone--read, cook, watch movies--and I would do them, but when left to my own devices for too long, I would generally remedy the situation. When I lived uptown most recently, first by myself, then with Ben, my friend Caroline lived a block away. Sometimes I would go to her apartment, with Johnson the dog, at 10 o'clock at night, just for some companionship. And take-out. We ate a lot of take-out. On the list of the 1000 best things about Caroline would be: Just because she ordered a burrito an hour ago does NOT mean she's not up for a little Chinese. But I digress.

My point is that I took being alone for granted. When being alone took more than a couple of hours I sought out my "people," the handful of people who require nothing of me but my presence, and me of them, making it kind of like being alone but with laughing and food. Now, I am rarely alone. A big part of my late night ways is that I need the time to do work, but an almost equally big part is that I crave some solitude, that feeling, however artificial, that the air around me is mine.

Because I was still feeling so lousy all Saturday morning and into the afternoon, Ben offered to take the girls out to Connecticut to let me sleep. I wasn't sure about this idea, and neither was Lily. But I couldn't get off of the couch, and the girls (and the dogs) were confused by my uncharacteristic lethargy. So I said okay, and after hugs and promises to call, and the packing of the usual round-up of unnecessary items, they were off, and the door closed behind them, and for a moment I was stunned by the sound: the resonating cymbal clap of being alone.

And I did rest, too. I didn't say that at the beginning because I was so pleased recounting all I managed to do. But I went to bed relatively early, and I got up relatively late, and I watched Jon Stewart with a lap full of miniature candy bars, and although I'm still a little sniffly and a little more lethargic than usual, I can safely say that I am more well rested than I have been in quite some time.

In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell: You don't know what you got 'til it's gone. I mean that both ways. I was very glad when everyone came back.