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| Home Sweet Home |
We change our traditions, we make new ones.
I've read a lot about senior citizens who are sad and lonely at missing the big family gatherings this year. I am not one of those. I wasn't sad at all. In fact, I really enjoyed not cooking a turkey for the first time in 42 years. I enjoyed being lazy and watching a lot of television and spending a little time outdoors with my Frankie on a beautiful fall day.
I grew up in a crowded household of eight children and parents somehow fitting into a 4-bedroom, 1-bath home. I went directly from home into marriage and in a few years began adding children. I would be 60 years old before I would know how it is to live entirely alone. I relished it. I love my family deeply. But I soon learned the beauty and peace to be found in solitude--something I had never known before that time. I remember at that time I wrote an essay about aloneness vs. loneliness. The former does not necessarily equate to the latter.
I understand not everyone sees aloneness as I do, and they crave human contact and association. But years of working from home really prepared me for the substitute of online, distanced communication -- both with co-workers and even my family.
These months of distancing due to Covid-19 have not been difficult for me. I do see my kids and friends once in awhile. In the summer time we had lunches on the patio. Sometimes one or another of them will drop by and we visit but keep our distance across a large room. And now I drive my grandsons to and from school one day a week (wearing masks, utilizing hand sanitizer, etc.). My monthly movie group has resorted to watching movies streaming online and then following with a Zoom online meetup to discuss. It works very well thanks to a local theater that streams indie and foreign and other popular movies of the sort we like. This all feels like sufficient contact for now. Christmas and New Year will come and go and we'll all survive.
Next year, Thanksgiving will be different. Now that my kids have successfully done a dinner on their own, we will be able to share duties, as a family, putting on the dinner. I don't see myself doing it all myself ever again. And, if all goes to plan, I will have sold my house and moved to a new smaller place by then, too. I'm dreaming of that change--but more about that another time.
Things will eventually change in 2021, and we'll be back to close personal visits, meals, gatherings. And I'll love it when that happens. But I'm still going to enjoy a few more months of some precious solitude. I choose to think of this time as an opportunity I
never had growing up or while raising my family. I will embrace the time I
have for this.
1 comment:
Solitude indeed I wasn't surprised at all to read just now that you were not only succeeding but thriving at living alone. I don't blog nearly as much as I use to though I still write some book reviews. Reading and writing while I try to learn how to happily live alone is pretty much what I do. The days of adventure fishing in grizzly bear country in Montana or wilderness canoe trips into the far north of Canada are all memories of the past. Perhaps sometime after I lost my spouse and was contemplating driving all the way to see my son and grandchildren in Phoenix that I made the the wall suggestion that I would like to stop on the way and get acquainted. You were kind enough to respond with your attitudes about solitude though you will also mentioned your disillusionment with the previous relationship jesting you are done with that sort of thing. Perhaps also my spending Thanksgiving yesterday and Christmas coming led me wonder to how you are doing and now I know and my day yesterday was actually very similar to to yours. I'm reasonably content of learned how to cook that Thanksgiving dinner for myself take care of household chores okay I cheated a bit there and initially hired a former student and EMT to help look after my spouse when she turned very violent. She now acts as a part-time housekeeper. Like you and your family I much into the rules and regulations for keeping safe and I know that many of us senior citizens continue to shelter in place weather in small family groups or living alone. Wishing you well and I'm very glad to read you are well sincerely, Ray
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