A few days ago, a picture of my late husband came up in my “memories” on Facebook. I re-posted it, as I had been thinking about him a lot in recent days. I was surprised then, when two people who had known us and lived in our house back then posted lovely memories of him and of living with our family, and I also received private messages from two others about memories the picture had evoked for them of those times at our house. I’ve often talked about our “crowded house” from the days before he became ill. Over the years of our marriage, many people - some colleagues from work, some friends from volunteer or interest activities, some family members - came to live in our big communal home when they were without other places to stay for one reason or another. Some just needing a place to stay for the few months between college and grad school, some between jobs or between moving, some in hopes of joining our family, some fallen on hard times, some just because they needed, for a time, to share expenses, and some taking shelter from stalkers or abusive partners. Some stayed mere days and I don’t remember most of them; many stayed for weeks or months, or, in some cases, even years.
Each and every time, they brought different energy, different contributions, different problems into our home, but all of them live in my memory. I think now of Tim, Lester, Gina, Sarah, Gilbert, Paul, Mary, John, Donna, Christopher, Denise, Ed, Wilson (and family), Ruth, J.T., Eric, Scott, and my oft-in, oft-out sister Jean Marie - I think of all of them with affection, and remember the laughter around the dining room table, the shouting up two flights of stairs, the veritable mountains of cloth on the laundry room floor, and the constant music and motion of such a household.
Since my husband’s passing, I have also lived with others from time to time - some family members moving back with partners and/or children, some friends on hard times, some just because. In those years, I’ve lived with Berg, Shawn, Jinny, Madison, Rose, Amy, Denni, Kayla, Emily, Hannah, Daymon and Iris. Not to mention, while in Africa, Paige and Digna.
I have also lived alone. The first four years after my husband’s death, and from time to time in between, and all of the last year, I have been alone in my home. This brings an entirely different energy, and, any time I live with a roommate or have others living with me, I feel more appreciation of those alone times, and struggle with the adjustment. I have been fortunate that (almost) all of the room-mates, house-mates, co-habitants that I’ve lived with over the years have been congenial, fun,
I do miss that. Every time.
I grew up in a similar household - six sisters, two Cuban foster-sisters, and a string of foundlings my mother would take in from time to time - a loud, raucous, chaotic Irish Catholic household. In those days, I would simply leave - go out for long walks, find a park bench or perch on top of a hill just outside of town, and simply sit - alone, quiet, undisturbed. It was in those times that words began to come to me, and I began to write. Then, even back at my desk in the noisy house, I could disappear into the stillness between myself and the page. Living alone is conducive to a strong relationship with your page, to the kind of concentration and focus that helps to structure a story and weave a plot together, that allows you to know a character and sink into their thoughts.
Living alone has seemed to me, from time to time, to be the ideal situation for a writer. And for me. And yet, I keep gladly opening the door to others to live with me. I have, over the years, received many messages from people grateful for the times that open door was the thing they needed. Every time someone (or several someones) stepped through, I struggled with the loss of that stillness, sometimes for days or weeks, sometimes for the whole time they were there. But in my mind, I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.
Do I, in the early mornings, wish for days of the solitude, the stillness, the inner and outer quiet? Certainly. But mostly what I feel, as a person and as a writer, is a sense of gratitude for all of those with whom I’ve shared time and space, meals and laughter. Gratitude for the company, the compassion, the lessons learned in cooking, building, logic, and life; gratitude for the experience of difference, the lessons in the wide variety of humor, the discoveries of passions I might otherwise not have known. Gratitude for all the things I learned and observed: a young man’s pain over a troubled childhood; the struggles of a budding artist; the joys of a love found under our roof; the poems read out loud to each other; time spent with two friends knee-deep in laundry, sorting it out and laughing; the spontaneous dances in the living room; the boys and men, girls and women, children and couples who shared with us, laughed with us, cooked with us, and grew with us. A closed door would never have generated those memories. I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.
There is an old joke which has recently resurfaced as a social media meme: “I’m a writer. Fair warning: anything you say or do I may use in my stories.” While few of my characters feel directly based on this multitude of people I’ve known and lived with, every living breathing character who lives and loves and struggles on my pages -all of them- in some way or other, walked through that open door. Whether they are literally based on people who have lived with me, or just grew from the broadened knowledge of human-ness that came from so much life under my roof.
I will always find solitude, will always find my way back to the long days filled with comfortable deep stillness of mind, body, and home, and within that stillness, will always be an open door.
