Reclaiming my house

Thursday, 2:17 pm

By Kate

It is the oddest thing. The lad has been away for two weeks and will be gone another two weeks. My mind says “this is what it’s going to be like from the end of August until forever.” And while sometimes that is a freaky thought that sends little shocks to my nerve endings, I find that I’m beginning to plan as if he isn’t here anymore. It’s as if his return home from the middle of July until the last week of August is vacation and something to be planned around. In my mind, I think that I’ve already had him leave home. Something has definitely changed in the last week. When I talk with him on the phone it’s as if he doesn’t live here anymore and we’re just catching up on what the other is doing...adult to adult. That was a brand new development that took me by surprise. But I like it.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been in a gradual process of reclaiming my house. For me and not with an eye toward accommodating the lad. Sometimes that feels strange (and a little guilt inducing), but mainly it feels good. There’s nothing big happening, but bit by bit, I’m rearranging patterns and habits that have been dormant for a long time. My house, my way.

It’s still a rather new feeling and I haven’t gotten used to it yet—I still find myself glancing at the clock thinking “he’s going to be coming in the door any minute” and then realize...no, he’s not. But more and more often, I find myself thinking that in another month, I can can move this, throw that out, put this away, pack these up...and on and on. Some of it I can do now.

I’m still not convinced that I’m ready for this empty nest thing, but all indications seem to suggest that it’s not going to be as bad as I thought. If anything, it seems to be growing on me, incrementally. I’m not look back, but looking forward with some amount of pleasant anticipation. I’m surprised at myself.

In unrelated news—the rain has finally stopped falling. And, after several days of ghastly humidity, that, too, is dropping. I can literally feel the air drying out and turning crisper this afternoon. That’s relative, of course. Eighty percent humidity isn’t exactly dry, but surely feels like it after the past week. I’m not sticking to everything this afternoon and the walls and floors have lost their tacky feeling. This is such a welcome improvement and it may even last for several days. Man, that would be a relief. I want to go outside and do gardening stuff—not only catch up, but start new projects, too. So far this summer, outdoor work has mainly been a matter of catching up on the basics between deluges.

And...today was trash day. My favorite day of the week. Strangers take anything away that I drag out to the curb. What a deal. It’s a good thing the lad wasn’t here this morning. He’ll never miss what I dispatched to the curb this morning, but I can guarantee that it would have been dragged straight back into the house if he had been here. Heh.