It’s quiet. Maybe eerily quiet. I’m sitting here in silence at my laptop – my only noise accompaniment besides the clicking of the keys and the slow cadence of my own breath is the sound of the washing machine wooshing upstairs. At this time of the night, that isn’t really that unusual – if my wife is still up, she will often also be sitting at her laptop typing away. But tonight I type alone.
The reason for this is simple: I AM alone. From basement to attic, the current head count in my house is one (counting me). This has been the population peak since Monday afternoon and will not likely be surpassed again until Saturday night. Why, you ask? My family has taken to the road.
On Monday, after my daughter’s pre-school session ended, my wife picked her up with the new car (a Mazda 5) fully packed including our 2-year-old son and headed straight for the highway bound for North Carolina. They are down there now visiting with my parents and my sister and her family (yes – my wife DID voluntarily take two rambunctious pre-schoolers on a 10-hour road trip to visit her in-laws – wonders never cease). I’m somewhat surprised that in her current role as CDO (Chief Domicile Officer), she hasn’t taken more sans-père excursions. Though I suspect the factors of the car and my son’s day-by-day degrees of decreasingly dreadful decorum must have swung momentum towards such activities being less traumatic than they would have been mere weeks ago.
I’m glad that they went. Okay, let me rephrase that – I’m happy that they had taken advantage of such an opportunity and it is going positively for them. Sure I miss them and wish I could have joined. But work is busy and I’m making the most of the situation (and by most, I mean I’m doing the least I possibly can). It is pleasant having some freedoms I’d grown accustomed to not having: such as the freedom to watch a show when it is on without interuptions; the freedom to come and go on without having to wait for or coordinate efforts with anyone; the freedom to sleep with the door open (bedroom door, that is); the freedom to say yes to off-hours plans without consulting anyone. I’d classify these new freedoms as a mix of refreshing and disorienting. And I’m sure upon their return I will be feeling the a similar mix adjusting back to normal life.
As I am now thinking about it, though I’ve always been a fairly independent person I’ve never really been on my own for any length of time. I’ve never lived alone and I’ve only been single for brief stints since I got into the dating scene back in high school. While I feel like I could do it if life took me that way, I wouldn’t want to. A house isn’t really a home without an array of personalities. And my family exhudes color into this home when they are here. I am enjoying the peace and quiet, but I won’t miss it when it is gone.