MARLBORO — I left home on Sept. 1.
It wasn't a divorce or even a trial separation, but it was time. Time for she who so dutifully tended the nest over the course of 25 years to fly.
I left my younger son behind. I thought my flight might lend itself to his. It did.
On the very same mid-October weekend that he spread his wings, however, his older brother returned home, taking up residence here alongside his partner.
By Christmas, we were all together in the house for 24 hours, uncertain to whom the home belonged, but no matter, because after the holiday, my husband, Casey, found himself alone for the very first time.
There were many mini-reunions between the two of us in the months that followed, and like those in the previous months, they were sweet and also unexpectedly turbulent, as was my return home to the mountains from the sea barely three weeks ago.
Just this past week, we found our stride and I began to feel the fragile stirrings of what I first felt for my husband when we met 33 years ago.
My work on my book unfurled with similar spring-like energy, and I spread the pages across the dining room, because I could.
We dedicated one of the boys' rooms to art and to yoga.
I recently added a Metta practice to my daily time on the mat, often murmuring the words of the prayer throughout the day when washing my hands or similarly fretting about the spread of the coronavirus.
“May you be safe. May you...,” I say, but in my anxiety, I often forget what comes next. Even so, I send the energy of the prayer out to those I love and to family across the country and to neighbors and old friends and to everyone everywhere - as one.
Other passions spread, too. I've set up writing desks on both floors. Casey has a drawing table, too.
Each day, I write in the delight of spacious silence, while at night, I share my work with Casey as we share dinner and later share reading by the wood stove.
* * *
The calls came yesterday - three of them, in a succession, from dusk to dark.
The first call indicated that school would be closed for the next three weeks, effective immediately.
I reeled with the news. This would mean that Casey, a teacher, would be home day in and day out, a prospect that posed a significant challenge to the flow of my work even as it added delight.
Within an hour, the second call came.
Our oldest and his partner. Their jobs.
Casey and I began moving things around to make space, thinking they could have one room for sleeping and the other as a sitting room.
The third call came late while we were watching the presidential debate.
Our youngest.
* * *
And so it is that I wake this morning to the sun rising over the mountain feeling very much like an ear of corn, freshly husked.
The Metta Prayer spontaneously begins, offering itself to my fears for others.
I think of my boys, the youngest whose early weeks began in my arms beside the hospital bed in my mother's living room, where her workout equipment stood just weeks earlier and then she took her last breaths.
I think of 9/11 and of mass shootings and of the global climate crisis wreaking havoc across our country in communities, including ours, which one summer day lost its back roads and even its highway. I think of the first black president and the first woman candidate.
My boys' young lives have been so full.
I think of all the young lives who have no home to which they can return.
I think of all the women my age making space for everyone at a time when the value of our lives has been exposed, in every way, as less than those belonging to men.
“May you be safe, May you be....”
Along with the broken but perfect melody of the Metta Prayer comes a base line, a mantra, something I want to share - not only with my bold and beautiful boys whose lives have been uprooted, but also with all the mothers reshaping nests, and with all those everywhere feeling uncertainty and fear.
“Made for these times.”
And so we are.