? ? ?
The next morning, Rachel told us she had decided to become certified in neonatal care. She’d had it with car crashes and heart attacks and wanted to be around “new beginnings.” As Pia and I congratulated her, I wondered what my big news was and realized it wasn’t anything I could put into words. I had no grand announcements. I hadn’t quit my job or found a new one. Couldn’t recall the last time someone had winked at me on Match.com. If anything, there was an absence: Richard’s ghost. He was simply gone from the apartment when I returned after our trip. The whole place felt lighter and full of air.
But I did have news, something precious and private. Being alone has a whole different flavor for me now. Solitude has turned into someplace I find sustenance instead of despair. No doubt the terrors will return, along with the old version of loneliness, the kind that guts me and sends me tumbling into the void, but for now it’s not the case. I know now that more marvels than we can possibly imagine exist on earth—the trick is remembering this every day.
As I listened to my friends talk about their plans that Sunday morning, I couldn’t wait to go home and free my paintings from the back corner of my closet where I’d tossed them in a fit of self-loathing the day Richard left; gaze into them—maybe find something beautiful in there to celebrate—maybe tear them all up and start over again. Either would be fine. I couldn’t wait to hug my sweet fat Ziggy, feel his hot heart beating close to mine, stroke his cat head full of dreams of a freshly opened tuna can or of the chase and the kill.
Something else too. The fact is, I’m a middle-aged woman who should have middle-aged concerns, but I don’t. Fear feels quaint somehow. I just don’t have any these days. Now when I swim, I feel powerful and sleek and swift. I delight in my mass, in all that water I displace. I am this joyous creature plunging into my element: water. What difference does it make how old I am or what jeans I can fit into or how fast my roots come in? My aging body, my dull job. I mean, really, who cares?
I’m alive.