These days, I’m missing respite.

We live several hours from our nearest relatives and have a spotty social network in our area (life is busy, and it’s hard to make new friends post-college), so each time we added to our family, it was with the assumption we’d be doing the parenting by ourselves.

Mostly, we have. The Chaplain and I figured out how to ask each other for what we needed to keep our tanks from running empty, and we made it work. That was when I had out-of-the-house activities a couple of times a week, and so did the Chaplain. Those out-of-the-house options narrowed to one during the pandemic: The Long, Solitary Walk.

If it had to be just one thing, the Long Solitary Walk is the best. But there comes a time in an introvert’s life when she just wants to be home alone. And when everyone has to stay home all the time, that just isn’t happening.

Last week, the Chaplain came home, saw my face, and offered to take the kids to the pool and leave me home.

It may have been my first time home alone since lockdown started.

In years past, when I was home alone, I would often spend the whole time cleaning. Or wandering aimlessly. Or sitting, feeling guilty that I wasn’t being productive. Anything but doing the things I typically long to do when I can’t do them: gardening, fixing things, reading a good book, or working on a sewing project.

I don’t want to give too much credit to maturity OR my meditation practice, but I suspect one or both is responsible for what happened the moment the house was quiet this time.

I was immediately in the zone.

I got a ton of work done on a project that had been trapped in my head for weeks. It went so well that the Chaplain took the kids out again the next day and gave me a little MORE time.

The ability to ignore everything else and just make something beautiful is a gift.

It’s jarring how fast that quiet focus wears back off again once the kids get home.

When they piled into the house after that first evening of quiet, I didn’t stop sewing. I made more mistakes in the first 15 minutes after they got home, as they crowded excitedly around me telling what they’d done while they were out, than all the mistakes I had made while they were gone (which I think was none, so it was a low bar).

I don’t begrudge the kids their mom. But I do need time and space to be creative without getting sucked into the false urgency of many of their requests. I miss the relative ease of getting some pre-pandemic alone time, or friend time, or ANY kind of time that would break up the day after day pressure of being overstimulated and exhausted with no hope of respite.

We will all be OK. I know it’s true. I’m learning how to dig deep and thrive in this weirdness. But I haven’t quite worked out the respite part.