Summer Solitude

Image credit: Photo by photo71 on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I'm not one to keep busy during the summer, at least not in the sense of running the kids from place to place, activity to activity.  Yet, not being busy — whether inside inside the house playing board games or (more often) just keeping the kids from driving each other crazy, or outside swimming or at the park or at a library or museum — isn't always relaxing.  Well, it is for the kids: just not entirely for the mama who has to make sure that those kids stay fed and safe and moderately hygienic, the mama who (since those kids are entirely school free) gets not a moment alone.  (If you're a mom to young kids, you can know this can quite literally be true; not even bathroom time is sacred!)  And since those moments alone are the way this particular mama recharges her batteries, summer can be draining.  It's a good thing I don't have anything planned, as I could hardly be productive at it...

So evenings — when I slate some time to take part in everything from 12 Step to yoga — become a delicate self-care balancing act.  This week as I got ready for my 12 Step meeting, I felt drained by the mere thought of it.  Sit in a room with people?  Who are talking?  Ugh!  All I wanted, what I would have paid dearly for, was a quiet room where I could sit down by myself for a few minutes.  So when the time came to leave, I didn't go.  I went upstairs, shut and locked the door, turned on some white noise to drown out all human sound and took a deep, refreshing breath of solitude.

It's funny, for four years I didn't go to 12 Step meetings, and now I feel a little twinge of guilt whenever I miss one, even when I know that what I'm missing it for is important too.  So I did feel a little twinge, but only a very little.  It was gone by the time I exhaled.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.