Wednesday, July 6, 2011

quiet solitude

At a different time in my life, my days were filled with people who depended on me, some for the very stuff of life. I fed them from my body, from my heart and mind, cared for them on a very basic physical level, as well as mentally and with my heart.
So, I did my job, they are still alive, they thrive. They need me less and less, and some not at all. It is the state of being I worked toward for years.
But now that I am here, it do not find it to be the halcyon I had imagined. I have time to myself, I have hours I can call my own. When I consider what I would have done, 15 years ago, for a day without demands, it surprises me. It seems those years are sleep deprived, and mentally exhausting, even as I was so happy during them.
Now, there is a vacuum, it seems. the old cliche is true, I want them to need me again, I want to be able to furnish what they require, at least a little. I would love to read them a story, or sit on a porch swing, with a child wrapped in a blanket, and talk about the stars and music and kittens.
But they don’t want to sit with me, not for more than a couple of minutes, which is as it should be. To start becoming needy toward my children would be regression, it would be pathetic, asking them to enable my lack of direction.
But, ah, to nurse my baby, one more time, to become the symbiotic organism that is a mother with a child at her breast, nothing else needed in the world! It is one of the most exquisite experiences a human can have. It is to fall in love a thousand-fold.
But all I have is time.

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