Haiku My Heart, The Goodness Of Being Alone For Awhile

This week I have held
Just my grandson and myself
With these, my old hands

It has been a very different sort of week for me. I have been mostly alone, my husband out of town and me sick with a sort of cold/flu. I have learned a great deal this week, not the least of which is that my husband creates 90% of the laundry in this house.
And it has been good.
Sickness causes us to pause, to rest. Causes us to turn necessarily inwards. I think of all the commercials on television, advising us that if we take this medication, or that one, we can go out into the world and act as if we were not ill at all, and thus we spread our viruses, thus we ignore our most basic instincts, thus we treat our bodies as if they did not matter at all.
I have been alone and yet, mostly not lonely. I have written more, read more, and thought more than I have done in a long time. I have had moments of profound melancholia. I have had moments of peace. I have drunk more tea than I have perhaps ever drunk in my lifetime up 'til now. I have slept well. I have had strange and wondrous dreams.
I have missed my husband. I have thought of him every moment. I have been so glad that he is where he grew up, in the rocky hills of Tennessee, happy in the woods, watching the morning there catch light, watching the deer come in and the wild turkeys flock. I have talked to his sister about the death of their dear aunt, I have said to her, "We need to go have some FUN! Let's go to Las Vegas!"
Well. It's been a week. It has seemed as if nothing was happening while at the same time, I have realized that even in rest, growth occurs. I have hosted an entire lifespan of a virus. I am, I have to say, grateful to it. It gave me the opportunity this week of being alone to rest. To hold myself, as it were, in my very own old hands. I have realized that the world can turn without me. That I can use these hands to hold myself.
And yet, it is only the knowing that they will be used to help and hold others which has made this time so precious. And if I had the words to thank all of you for being there for me this week, I WOULD be Raymond Chandler. I would be Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I would be a great writer. But I don't. And I'm not. But I tell you this- if I hadn't been able, this week by myself, to send my words out and then have proof that they were read- well. I don't know. And I do know this- your words here and on your own blogs are so real to me that I can almost feel your flesh. I can almost feel your faces in my hands. I can feel your hearts in my own heart. So I hold you too, in these old hands. They are wrinkled but they are soft and they are strong. Can you feel them? I hope so. I do.

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