surfingdemon
Senior Member
She never, ever imagined that she would feel and see years of sad, isolated loneliness stretching endlessly ahead of her again. The last time she’d experienced this foreboding long emptiness before her she had been 23 years old. The year before when, alone, she’d decided to have her first born child.
She remembered the long sleepless nights of his first four years. The well meaning experienced parents whose children had long since flown the nest telling her to hold and enjoy the experience of his childhood, for it would, in retrospect, be but a momentary fleeting one. At that time, eyes crossed from lack of sleep, her exhausted attention held on the dancing skipping child, lest he wander into the road, the time seemed to have stretched for eternity. She realized that just as then she had been starting on her adult journey in life, so was he now. Just as he had been her everything then, he was twenty one years old and someone else was his everything now. She would always have a special place in his heart as ‘mum’ but now it was time for him to make his own home.
Conflicted, she was torn between feelings of sadness to be losing the daily closeness of such a special life changing relationship that had mesmerized and held her enthralled, to the joy and wonderment of watching him begin his. And, just as he was beginning his next stage in life so, too soon, would her now fourteen year old daughter because, as she now knew, those deceptively stretched out years were too soon gone.
Her head on one side, gazing at the ceiling, she contemplated the two empty bedrooms above her head. Her son was away for the weekend at his girlfriends’ flat, in another town. He had explained that he was now spending every weekend living at his girlfriends so that everyone could gradually get used to the change of them making a permanent home together the following spring. Her daughter was out in the city center with her friends, watching the annual switching on of the Christmas lights. Thinking back to when the house had always felt busy and noisy and full to the brim, when there were always places to go to and not enough time, at times half expecting that she would meet herself coming in at the door. Never imagining then that the sometimes desperately wanted peace would become an echoing emptiness where only bittersweet memories remained.
There was a scraping sound on the concrete path outside the room window as the little Westie pushed her tin bowl around, licking and searching for any remaining morsels within its’ depths. The scraping sound stopped and after a brief pause was replaced by insistent scratching on the front door.
Her husband wandered through from the kitchen humming to himself. Crossing the room he stepped into the hall opening the front door to a bouncing, grateful Westie and a swirl of cold rain drenched air. Putting the dog in her crate, he re-crossed the room to sit on a sofa where he pressed the button on the remote control. The silent room filled with the sound of 60’s jazz and Richard Burtons’ dark and impassioned countenance filled the TV screen.
They smiled at each other. A shared smile filled with love and years of camaraderie and learned acceptance. She felt puzzled that she should feel so empty when the person who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with shared the same room. The previous 15 years of snatching precious short moments of time alone together had now become what they’d always yearned for, for years stretching ahead into the future.
She remembered their anticipation of this time to come, the shared plans for new hobbies, new adventures and freedom, a time that she hadn’t expected to arrive quite so soon.
Glancing up, tears glittering in her eyes, she caught her husbands gaze. He stood up and walked across the room, settling with her on the end of the sofa where she reclined half curled. Tucking his cold icicle like feet behind the warm crook of her knees, he grinned. Batting him with a cushion they roared with laughter and she realized that she was not alone. That her family would continue to grow and ebb and flow around her as she grew old with this man that she loved. Knowing now that the only certainty in life was change she was at peace, safe and warm with her husband, the gas fire glowing steadily on the wall, the wind outside whistling around the old window frames, their Westie curled up in her bed, huffing in her sleep.
She remembered the long sleepless nights of his first four years. The well meaning experienced parents whose children had long since flown the nest telling her to hold and enjoy the experience of his childhood, for it would, in retrospect, be but a momentary fleeting one. At that time, eyes crossed from lack of sleep, her exhausted attention held on the dancing skipping child, lest he wander into the road, the time seemed to have stretched for eternity. She realized that just as then she had been starting on her adult journey in life, so was he now. Just as he had been her everything then, he was twenty one years old and someone else was his everything now. She would always have a special place in his heart as ‘mum’ but now it was time for him to make his own home.
Conflicted, she was torn between feelings of sadness to be losing the daily closeness of such a special life changing relationship that had mesmerized and held her enthralled, to the joy and wonderment of watching him begin his. And, just as he was beginning his next stage in life so, too soon, would her now fourteen year old daughter because, as she now knew, those deceptively stretched out years were too soon gone.
Her head on one side, gazing at the ceiling, she contemplated the two empty bedrooms above her head. Her son was away for the weekend at his girlfriends’ flat, in another town. He had explained that he was now spending every weekend living at his girlfriends so that everyone could gradually get used to the change of them making a permanent home together the following spring. Her daughter was out in the city center with her friends, watching the annual switching on of the Christmas lights. Thinking back to when the house had always felt busy and noisy and full to the brim, when there were always places to go to and not enough time, at times half expecting that she would meet herself coming in at the door. Never imagining then that the sometimes desperately wanted peace would become an echoing emptiness where only bittersweet memories remained.
There was a scraping sound on the concrete path outside the room window as the little Westie pushed her tin bowl around, licking and searching for any remaining morsels within its’ depths. The scraping sound stopped and after a brief pause was replaced by insistent scratching on the front door.
Her husband wandered through from the kitchen humming to himself. Crossing the room he stepped into the hall opening the front door to a bouncing, grateful Westie and a swirl of cold rain drenched air. Putting the dog in her crate, he re-crossed the room to sit on a sofa where he pressed the button on the remote control. The silent room filled with the sound of 60’s jazz and Richard Burtons’ dark and impassioned countenance filled the TV screen.
They smiled at each other. A shared smile filled with love and years of camaraderie and learned acceptance. She felt puzzled that she should feel so empty when the person who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with shared the same room. The previous 15 years of snatching precious short moments of time alone together had now become what they’d always yearned for, for years stretching ahead into the future.
She remembered their anticipation of this time to come, the shared plans for new hobbies, new adventures and freedom, a time that she hadn’t expected to arrive quite so soon.
Glancing up, tears glittering in her eyes, she caught her husbands gaze. He stood up and walked across the room, settling with her on the end of the sofa where she reclined half curled. Tucking his cold icicle like feet behind the warm crook of her knees, he grinned. Batting him with a cushion they roared with laughter and she realized that she was not alone. That her family would continue to grow and ebb and flow around her as she grew old with this man that she loved. Knowing now that the only certainty in life was change she was at peace, safe and warm with her husband, the gas fire glowing steadily on the wall, the wind outside whistling around the old window frames, their Westie curled up in her bed, huffing in her sleep.