On My Own

 

I am spending a week at the church, dealing with various service people, while my husband remains in the city to work and deal with the finishing of the basement. That was supposed to happen last week, but because of various delays, it won’t be finished until this week. Except today a new renter arrives and will need the room my son has been borrowing while the basement is being completed. So my son will shift all his stuff into our room and be bunk mates with my husband for a week while the final basement renovations are finished, my husband will deep clean the renter’s room, and the new renter will arrive. And hopefully this week my son will move back to the basement. Lucky me, I get to hide at the church and avoid all that chaos. If the internet is successfully installed tomorrow, I may even finagle an extra week up here, and by the time I eventually come home, the renter’s quarantine will be almost over.

My son scolded me a bit before I came up here because I don’t have a car or cell phone, and no internet until it’s installed on Monday. What if I need anything? What if I fall down the stairs and break an ankle and can’t get help? What if I get snowed in and can’t get groceries? Those fears don’t worry me. There are neighbours on each side, and so many workmen coming in and out that eventually someone will find me.

Our husky young contractor, Ray, confessed to my husband that he would never stay in the church at night alone. The idea freaks him out. I feel no fear or nervousness about it. This is a solid, welcoming, friendly building with a long history of generosity and kindness to others. I feel perfectly comfortable here. Except for the fact that there’s no heat. That’s a tad annoying. I could manage it just fine by staying barricaded in the bedroom with a space heater, but Brio isn’t thrilled at staying in one small room all day. He wants to be down in the rec room, playing fetch with his red rubber ball, even though he’s freezing cold once he stops and holds still.

I love my family and have friends and enjoy my work, but I also really, really like being alone. I look at my hobbies---writing, reading, gardening, handicrafts, weaving, walking---and all of them are activities done alone. I relish curling up with a book and blanket or sitting on my yoga mat, knowing that there’s no one expecting anything of me at that moment. No conversation, no questions, no guilt for eating cold cereal for supper if I feel like it. No one rolling their eyes when I watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for the hundredth time.

Tomorrow I have the internet people and environmental study people coming. Tuesday I have the propane guy coming to decide if they can install propane (hopefully soon!). And at some point Ray will appear to do the eavestroughs. But otherwise I am free and on my own until next Saturday, and there is a bone-deep pleasure in knowing that.

Right now I’m in the bedroom, my laptop perched on a plastic stool while I sit on a cushion in front of it on the floor, and Brio is flaked out on the bed. It is completely silent except for the clicking of the keyboard and the steady ticking of the heater and the buzz of the fluorescent light (soon to be replaced). An entire Sunday to spend quietly by myself. Pure peace.