I’m responsible. They are entrusted to me. They suffer from my failures and thrive under my firm and decisive management. While I don’t determine their bottom line, I greatly affect it. They experience the ramifications of my actions, and at times, my lack of action.
As I sit on this swing today, I face the West, and I watch them. As the sun lowers, symbolically announcing the close of day, it illuminates my children in a new light. As my son cups the earth in his hand and gravity pulls the sand through his fingers, my daughter dangles, dangerously high and handless, on a bar. My motherly instincts wants to send a “don’t fall” to my daughter and a “watch for sharp objects” to my son, but today I am silent, still. I gamble on them being “o.k.” on their own.
As I observe them from a distance, it the picture perfect end to a typical summer day in America. Our hair smells of chlorine, slightly curly and touted by humidity. Our skin is slightly darker than when we started our morning. Our love is one day stronger. Our life’s one day closer to completion. Yet, on this seemingly insignificant day, I experience a whole new significance.
I am alone on this bench swing for two.
I could call a girlfriend to come over for company and good conversation, but it’s much to late and I’m much too exhausted to converse, and every morning 5 a.m. seems to come earlier than the one before. Truth be told, I don’t really want to talk. I want to write. Writing, the only facet of my life where emotions flow fluidly, out of what is normally an emotionless void.
The male species is out of question. One, I would not subject my child to someone with whom I am only vaguely familiar. Two, a casual thrill has never really been my thing. Three, I wouldn’t even know what I’m looking for.
So I sit, alone.
Alone is a state I’m not sure I want to be in. It seems unnatural. Like I’m rebelling against the natural order of life. Yet, at the same time, I can’t stand seem to move from the sway of the swing. A timed, rhythmic mediation that gives me the comfort of consistence. A vast contrast to the land of love, which is uncertain, chaotic, without rhythm.
I wonder how long I’ll sit alone. I’m not unhappy, perhaps indifferent, certainly blessed. To love and be in love is a primal need. So I guess it’s nothing out of the ordinary to want to feel that spark, the butterflies, to look at someone and know that they are just as absorbed in you as you are in them, captivated in a moment.
But for now, the effort to exhausting, the price too high, the thrill, more than my battered heart dares to endure. I’d rather sway in rhythm in my aloneness than ride the highs and lows of love. It’s a difficult but peaceful season.
For now, I’m going to sit.
