Alone Time

Last night at dinner we had a family conversation about how to structure these upcoming days and weeks ahead. Over the weekend we'd all been contemplating the variety of activities that would be important to include in each day. I think this social isolation has been the most challenging for my fifteen-year-old daughter. Not seeing friends and being limited so extremely is antithetical to what it means to be an adolescent. This is her time. Her friends (not her parents) are her people. As we reviewed what activities to include each day my partner Nancy, looking at Lucia's downtrodden eyes, said, "Alone time. It will be important for each of us to have some alone time every day."

I'm so sad about how this unprecedented time in our history is affecting everyone, but my heart hurts most for my daughter and her peers. This is a hard time to be a teenager. Last night I woke up at 3am filled with angst. I usually sleep soundly through the night, and if I wake up I go right back to sleep but last night I got stuck in my grief. Lucia, already craving some space and alone time was sleeping two floors down in our basement guest room. Her empty bed in the room across the hall was a stark reminder of how this global crisis is hitting my daughter.

These days, this time of voluntary isolation for the greater human good, is forcing us into being alone-- alone together but also alone with ourselves, a space many of us don't take or make room for on a daily basis.  My favorite poet, David Whyte, in an essay called Alone in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, writes "To be alone for any length of time is to shed an outer skin. The body is inhabited in a different way when we are alone than when we are with others. Alone, we live in our bodies as a question rather than a statement."  

Last night when I was awake I felt this aloneness, even with Nancy asleep right next to me and Lucia safe and sound downstairs. I felt an extreme vulnerability, like I was free-falling into the fear of these unknown times. It really is like living in 'a question,' this absence of knowing what's next.  Further on in the same essay Whyte writes, "Aloneness begins in puzzlement at our own reflection, transits through awkwardness and even ugliness at what we see, and culminates, one appointed hour or day, in a beautiful unlooked for surprise, at the new complexion beginning to form, the slow knitting together of an inner life, now exposed to air and light." 

This unknowing is scary for all of us and it affects the young and old in different ways, but Whyte's words give me comfort. There is a deeper place, maybe even a surprise beyond and within this alone-ness. Today is my family's first day trying out our new schedules. We'll each work on piecing together a puzzle of normalcy in this inconceivable new reality. We're all in this together. And Alone.

Navigation--Old School

This past week I've been in Vancouver, BC for a Yin Yoga training. It's the first time in a long time that I've been by myself for more than a day or two.  It's been luxurious and challenging at the same time. Most people think I am pretty outgoing, and I am, but I'm also a person who needs a lot of alone time and I'm very shy in new situations.

This week by myself has given me a lot of alone time that I need (and don't get enough of on a daily basis.) But it has also challenged me because my shy, introverted self has been in unfamiliar surroundings with no partner, friend, or family to bolster me into bravery. To make matters worse, I've been without cellular service so I haven't been able to use my phone as a social prop or for navigation in a new city.

I've eaten all of my meals alone, asked for directions to every place I've wanted to go, alone, studied alone, woken up alone, gone to sleep alone. Now, at the end of this week I am done with alone. Yesterday, I took a walk, alone. I am notoriously horrible with directions so I definitely geared myself up for this independent adventure. My daughter regularly asks if we are lost, even when Siri is telling me which left or right to make. On this walk, in a new city, alone, I had no Siri, no navigation, no map. Just me.

As I walked, I noted where the water was so I could use it as frame of reference. I paid attention to different buildings, pieces of art, notable gardens. I had no phone, no clock, so I just walked until I had to pee really badly and then I turned around. Being without the familiar crutch of my phone to tell me where to go or my partner to reassure me that we weren't getting lost, made me use my own senses more- to notice where I was walking visually, to feel what direction made sense in my own body.

The whole experience of being alone and fending for myself made me realize that that way of life isn't sustainable for me. I am not an island. I like to be alone sometimes but I definitely don't want to exist permanently in that state. It also gave me an opportunity to push myself in ways that shed light on my own strengths and abilities which so often lie dormant.

Another great part about this extended alone time is how excited I am to go home. I still have to get to the airport, find my gate, eat a few more meals--alone. But then I get to go home to my family and friends and bed and porch and cell service and face lotion. There's no place like home.