Bill has taken the kids away for a road-trip. I am home alone for multiple consecutive days and it’s like a miracle. I have not experienced solitude in my own home for more than seven years. I am cooking curry, taking a bath, playing music, having evening walks at a fast pace, reading books in long sittings, watching films with adult concepts in the middle of the day, and waking up in my own time.
But today I receive a call from the children and right away my daughter bursts into tears. She is missing me, it feels like too much she says. Only two more days, I console her, and you’ll feel happy again later today, this is just a wave. Then I suddenly recognise the emotion and its source that I am carrying about with me in all my glorious alone time – sadness.
It’s so complicated isn’t it, time alone. Relief to have space and solitude, but always, always, missing them. I am often made to feel peculiar that I feel like this, so thank you for describing this experience so beautifully and so accurately.
I fear that I won’t feel sad. I hope I get an opportunity to find out.
Funnily enough I’m in the same situation at the moment. My son and his dad are on a road trip too and it’s the longest time I’ve been away from them. The most enjoyment I’ve had whilst they’ve been away was last night – the night before they were due to come back. I hadn’t realized I’d miss them quite so much.
It’s good to know she misses you. I don’t think my kids and their Dad have ever been away overnight while I am home. Not sure I would cope very well. I’d probably do a lot of stress cleaning.
I’m a single mum, and haven’t had a night to myself since June 2009. What I would give to have a simple weekend away- to recharge, to renew, to feel invigorated again for myself, and my children. I think it’s good for them to miss their mother- to feel her absence, and experience the void that exists without her presence. Because the old maxim needs a make-over, and I would argue that ‘absence makes the heart feel stronger’. Distance gives our children perspective, understanding, and acknowledgement of what we mean for each other. Enjoy this fleeting time apart, because the hugs you’ll get when your kiddies return will be SO fantastic.
*love* I’m glad you’re enjoying the time, and understand the missingness. I am not a mother and do not have children, but even when I want alone time, and get it, sometimes I over estimate how much I want, and then how much I miss my Loves is quite intense, and then I get to see them again and everything once again balances.
When I say that my father’s absence has “fathered” my poems, I do not mean that every time I sit down to write I am explicitly trying to write a poem that will bring him back. Rather, his absence has become a presence, a heat I feel when I am writing. Or perhaps, later in the process (months after I have walked away from the poem), I return to reread or revise and see my father staring back at me. Often I think a poem is about a particular idea—say a drowning victim, or kudzu—and later, I see him in the poem or the poem trying to become a conversation with him. The conversation is not always the same; it may be an argument, a plea, a reassurance, or maybe even just a shared moment of eye contact between me and the space (in the poem) where he should be standing.