Home Alone

A Day Out

         

After being informed by the-younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes that the name of my blog, Home Alone, could easily be misconstrued as a site offering racy photos during my time at home, I decided two things.  One, that I won't change the blog's name because I can't think of anything else I like better, and two, that I ought to stick to an especially tame topic today.

So, we are going to discuss what I do once a week, every week of every month of every year of my life.  I leave the home.  I go out.  But wait!  Sarah!  You don't have a car!  How can you possibly go out?!  I know, right?!  But the spouse and I have a deal all worked out specifically for this situation -- the spouse carpools once a week so I can have our car for the day.  I always get groceries and sometimes, I even schedule appointments for that day as well, turning the errands into a real outing if I'm not careful to hustle back toward the safety of home.  

Today is like most of my days out.  I got up and ready before it was time to drop the children at school (causing their always-charming exclamations of "Mom!  Wow!  We're not used to seeing you up this early.  Do you feel okay?  Do you know it's only 7am?"), then I drove to my oral surgery follow-up appointment and waited in the parking lot.  This waiting is fulfilling in two ways: I bring a book, usually of the self-help variety, that I'm not excited about and out of sheer monotony I read some of it, and (today at least) I got to see which car my oral surgeon drives.  And I was right about why everything costs a lot at his office.  His patients are funding his understated-but-incredibly-classy BMW fund.  I knew it.

 In his defense, though, as he got out of this amazing vehicle, his wife came around from the passenger's side and hopped in the driver's seat and took off down the road.  Maybe they share a car, too?  Maybe his wife was also having A Day Out? 

Seeing the oral surgeon is not the panic-inducing event it used to be for me, mostly because even I can see the huge "ANXIOUS" written across the top of my chart that causes both doctor and assistants to treat me like a frightened sparrow.  I also do a splendid job of smiling politely when the doctor gives me his trademark, "Thanks for being a patient patient, Sarah!" which I think endears me to all of them (if you have to endure the phrases "gum gardening" and "sizeable holes in the roof of your mouth" in the same visit, you deserve these accolades for your patience).    

After my appointment with pain, I proceeded to the grocery store.  And even though I had to be in the checkout line I don't like because this one particular checker always wants to visit, it worked out because he wanted to visit even more with the person waiting in line behind me, which took the casual-banter-between-perfect-strangers-pressure off of me.  Whew.  

And now I am quite glad to be back In, where I belong, and will leave the going Out until next time rolls around.

 

Won't you be my neighbor?

What I love best about Mr. Rogers is that he never forgot to put on a cozy sweater.  And he was marvelously patient with all those shrill-voiced puppets in Make Believe land.  And he really did seem to know and appreciate his neighbors (why would he have sung that song otherwise?).  

As a home alone person residing in suburbia, one would think that I have made some high-quality connections with the many inhabitants of my own neighborhood.  Not true.  Being home alone all day, one sees things, one hears things, and one makes many deductions based on her observations, but one does not go out of her way to make actual conversation with the people she would most likely need to rely on in case of say, her house catching fire. 

Aside from the parents, who live just around the corner and are therefore considered bona fide neighbors, I don't even know names.  But I know so many odd things about them all, and I am fond of many of them.  I know that the family across the street are sickeningly polite when you walk by, but say truly horrid things to their children when they think no one is listening.  The adults chain smoke, hang out in the garage, and only ever have temporary license plates on their vehicles. There is also a grandma with cancer who comes over regularly to fix them dinner.  

I know that the couple who lives next door to the aforementioned family is separated by a 20-year age gap, making most people think the wife is caregiving for an aged father, when in fact, it is her aged husband.  She has a booming voice and often employs neighborhood teens to observe her mowing her own lawn while they stand listlessly by, "learning" how to mow (I have yet to see anyone other than her tame this sacred circle of grass).  She is a model of determined industry, never even taking off her heels to attack weeds, scrub down the fence, or build a haphazard greenhouse for tomatoes.  Yet, countless times I have heard her offering food, plants, sewing supplies and any number of necessities to the family next door.  I wouldn't have thought she could hear much through her own booming, but she is quite perceptive after all.  For this, and for her sheer sensibility, I like her very much (but don't ask me to introduce you, because remember, I don't even know her name).  

There are many other neighbors I find fascinating:  the middle-aged man with a limp who plays football in inline-skates with the wheels removed (I cannot explain this one - but it's true) and listens to conservative talk radio at ear splitting volume (and who, along with his spouse, only, and I mean ONLY ever wear football jerseys outside the home); the greasy-haired latchkey girl next door who flits about the neighborhood with a cell phone in one hand and a soda in the other until her parents come home (then she posts a sign in her park-facing window that says "Hello people at the park having fun without me."); and the list could go on and on.  

I do think that if Mr. Rogers was still alive and also my neighbor I might summon the courage to talk to him.  After all, I would already know his name.

Home Alone: kind of like Emily Dickinson, only Different

Unfortunately for the literary world, I am not Emily Dickinson, and therefore am not spinning out reams of stirring poetry whilst I cavort* about my home all day.  I do think Ms. Dickinson lived rather a good life, though.  Her heart was at home, and she remained true to her heart throughout her life. 

"Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity." -- W.H. Auden 

Emily knew her "necessary limitations" and did not cross them, regardless of how out-of-sync with societal norms they may have been.  For that, I appreciate and admire her.  She is one example (there are many more, in fact a tremendous variety) to refer to as I test my own limitations.  

I thought of her recently when I declared myself "far too uncomfortable" to call and place an order for pizza.  The spouse, expecting this and thinking this behavior highly irrational and tiresome, tried to persuade me to see how inconvenient this made things, as I was the one with the phone number at my fingertips and he was the one driving home and could pick up said pizza.  I didn't think Emily would have wanted to call for a dratted pizza either, but I decided this was an accidental limitation for me that I needed to outgrow.  After all, I have been using a telephone with a modicum of success for decades now, and since the telephone made its debut around the time Emily made her exit, she probably didn't get all that much practice.  So I called, and by serving one of the two meals that the preposterously finicky children will eat, everyone survived the evening.  

 

*cavort: to bound or prance about in a sprightly manner; caper.  (I do not know if Ms. Dickinson did any capering.  I do quite a lot of it.)

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

Welcome to Home Alone

Greetings! Welcome to my small way of injecting some passion into life. I am full-up on purpose (the children, the spouse, the parents, the younger brother w/ unlimited mobile minutes, the home, the pups), but passion...passion is a different proposition altogether.

The blog is titled Home Alone because that is what I am. I am home -- the spouse and I share one car (to understand this phenomena fiscally, note the childrens' attendance at a private school below) and live in the hinterlands, and since wanting to browse the New Book shelf at the library isn't as high on our priority list as commuting to the city for a paycheck, I am usually the homebound partner. And I am alone -- for most of the day, anyway. After raising the children through infancy and the preschool years at home, then home schooling them for several years, we have with much relief all around found a niche for them in a rigorous private school. Thus, I am at home in quiet solitude.

 

 At first, my days without the children were about recovery. Recovering silence, uninterrupted thought, space, and order. I could breathe, I could think, I could wrap my mind around new ideas and generate my own. But I am lately feeling my strength rise to tasks beyond the scope of recovery...there is a glimmer of restoration on the horizon. So, here I go...