Soaking Dry

I am unaccustomed to having absolutely nobody at home. Every summer, for as long as I can remember, at least one child has been in and out, even if it has just been to use the house for free and random room and board. Sure, a blind dog can be a handful, but he doesn't speak, is not at all picky about what he eats (it doesn't even have to be food), and he is much too wise to criticize the hand that feeds him.

As I approach the mid point of week one of the three I will have entirely to myself, I am learning to enjoy the freedom, starting to live life with abandon. Sort of. Yesterday, I went for a drink after work with a friend. This morning, I lazed in bed until almost seven o'clock. This afternoon, tired from four solid hours of pacing around a retail space, I am actually lying in bed, under my covers, without fear that one of my children might catch me, prove their long held theory that I am, indeed, a useless, lazy slug. Tomorrow I might go hog wild and lie down buck naked. Maybe even on the family room couch. With a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in the other. Maybe I should buy some curtains first.

To tell you the truth, though, all this personal space, all this "me" time, free from judging eyes and sporadic requests for immediate action, makes me feel like a fish out of water. I am disoriented, still tip toeing around the house when insomnia hits in the wee hours, trying not to disturb the slumber of some phantom being. I wake in the morning trying to figure out how to fit my schedule around someone else's, until I realize there is nothing to work around. I am suddenly confronted with all this air, and I cannot breathe. I need to learn to be amphibious, to move seamlessly between a chaotic sea filled with  little fishes and a strange universe in which I find myself standing alone. Not so easy after all these years.

Thankfully, my three children are in three different time zones, which means I am on call for texts and emails at all times, day or night. And as needy as the three of them tend not to be, they each manage to pitch in every now and then, just to make me feel comfortable, I suppose, in my new and unfamiliar habitat. A request, a complaint, an impromptu critique; I live to see that flashing light on my phone, even if it's to tell me everything is not okay. How sick is that?

My guess is I will become adept at adapting just in time for my three weeks of freedom to be up. Just as suddenly as I was launched out of the deep, I will be tossed back in, arms flailing, stuffed to the gills (sorry) with feelings of obligation (however overblown they might be) and an overwhelming fear of giving my child yet more reasons to spend years on a shrink's couch.

But I will keep swimming. I am about as ready to leave the ocean filled with little fishes as a guppy is to fly. Sure, I don't mind coming up for air for a few weeks at a time, but my time in the water is winding down, and I am not quite ready to dry off.