September Solitude
I am huddled in an Adirondack chair on the deck of our island home kept warm by my flannel nightgown and my husband’s hoodie, my quilt wrapped tight around me. There is a cool wind blowing and the sun is still hidden behind the trees. I can think of no place I would rather be as we slip into September and my favourite season, autumn.
I have not been here since January, except for a quick weekend trip with my husband after the death of my mother. Travel restrictions and caregiving have kept me away. I have yearned to be here, on my own, wrapped in silence and solitude.
All my life I have needed time on my own and thankfully I married a man who understood that longing. He has never questioned or criticized the many times I have headed off on my own – for a day, a weekend, or several months. These last 18 months, the pandemic has kept me close to home. I saw relatively few people - but every day I spent time with my husband. When lockdown first began I thought so much time together might fracture our relationship. Instead, time spent together during those stressful days deepened our relationship and strengthened our bonds.
But that did not diminish my aching for solitude. Yes, I spent many long days alone in my office, reading, writing, and researching. But solitude transcends just being alone. Solitude also needs the right physical environment. For me, that involves forest, ocean, trails, birds, and silence – and our island home provides all of that.
I wanted to be here for the start of September, the month that always feels like the start of a new year. I took the ferry over on Tuesday and fell asleep early, exhausted and drained. I woke up at 4 am, as I often do, and was greeted by absolute silence. Fell back asleep and woke up two hours later, feeling more rested than I have in a long time. Every morning Tucker and I head out for long walks along forest trails and ocean cliffs. Every afternoon I sit and watch the birdlife flitting across our field and the hummingbird babies chasing each other, stopping to flutter in front of my face with curiosity. I have done little else other than reading, quilting, and reflecting.
The beginning of September is usually my time for planning and setting goals, choosing my word for the year, and writing my personal manifesto - but not this year, at least not yet. I’m not sure why - COVID, the death of my mother, the world spiraling out of control – or maybe all of it. I find instead that I am turning inward.
Parker Palmer posted a poem by Jeanne Lohmann last week, one of his go-to poems. He says he reads it in the evening as a way of reviewing how he’s lived that day. He reads it again in the morning, to remind him of the inner work he needs to be doing. He speaks of how Lohmann invites us to consider what is truly important in the limited time we have on earth.
Questions Before Dark
Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?
- Jeanne Lohmann
Maybe that is what I am feeling, the uncertainty of life, and the knowledge that I have fewer years ahead of me than years already lived. And so my thoughts are turning to what is truly important in this limited time I have left on earth. I will do my planning and goal setting, my head is full of dreams and ideas, but first I will pause during this September solitude to remember what matters to me at this stage in my life.