I don’t have an alarm clock here at the river, instead it’s the weaver birds who normally wake me at the crack of dawn, announcing the new day with a loud symphony, which I love and hate all at the same time! It’s been impossible to sleep well these past few weeks with all the worries and frustrations that have been mingling in my mind. Today I’m up even before the river birds’ early-hour orchestra has a chance to play parallel to a million jumbled thoughts racing around my head.
I feel a strange anxiety in my stomach, I ask myself why? I think I know. Tomorrow we head back to the city. It sounds crazy but I’m not sure I’m ready for it. Will leaving the river prick a hole in my simple little bubble of family, stillness and solitude? How will I keep the noise, the traffic, the television and the people from bursting this bizarrely beautiful, yet surreal bubble?
Over the past few weeks social media platforms have been trending with #isolation #stayhome #selfisolate. Lockdown has forced us all into some form of solitude.
We’ve had to face it, flounder in it, fight it or just simply feel it.
These days, we seem so frightened of being alone that we seldom let it happen. Even if family, friends and movies should fail, there is still the radio, the television or our ever-constant companion, the cell phone, to fill the void. Without even realising it, we tend to choke the space of our own solitude with people, posts and playlists. We allow them into every inch of our private space - social media even accompanies us to the toilet!
And when the noise stops, there is often no inner music left to take its place. Could lockdown have taught me to re-learn a lesson I inwardly know but may have forgotten: to be alone?
“Solitude,” says Louis Bouyer, “serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities.” In the stillness we are sifted and as we loosen our grip on all those things that seem so significant, we gently become more focused and our lives more simplified.
This self-isolating has been hard. For some much harder than for others. I know I've had it easy here at the river, but I’ve still hated not being able reach out, pat a back, shake a hand and most of all give a big hug. (That silly knocking of elbows just doesn’t cut it for me!) But as I lie here quietly, I realise that self-isolation is not all bad, in fact I’ve really enjoyed it. Instead of catching up with friends I’ve caught up with myself and whilst I’ve lost the conversational threads of my many WhatsApp groups (with our hopeless WIFI), I’ve found my own breath instead. I’ve caught and held and breathed in Solitude with long deep breaths. Now I feel scared to leave this new friend. Will I find her back in the city, in those overcrowded online spaces? Will I hear her above the news and the noise in my own household of habit?
When we first arrived here it was Summer and the light would creep through the cracks of the curtain guiding me towards my slippers and out of the room. But today it’s Autumn and it’s pitch dark. I don’t want to wake my husband, I know he has much on his mind, so I fumble to find my watch and I use the little digital light. 5:30am. It’s morning, yet it’s still night, today even the birds are still quiet.
With no fluffy gown (oh how I’ve missed it from home!) I grab a jersey and head for the kitchen. I make a cup of coffee and pick up my bible. Yes, this is why I think my body woke itself early: to be alone, to be still, to be with God.
The sun is now rising. I refill my coffee and, trying not to spill it, walk down to the rivers edge. This is where a fullness emerges in me. Like a cup poured up to the lip – I don’t want to spill that either. I know now that it is precious. The Psalmist expressed it well when he said, “My cup runneth over”.
In this moment of 'fullness' I am suddenly terrified that someone might come, and I might begin again to spill myself away. This is what happens to us, especially as women. We perpetually spill ourselves away in driblets to the thirsty. It is our instinct – to nurture, to nourish and to give. Our children, our husbands, our friends, our society all demand it of us and so we spill over our energy, our time and our creativeness, seldom allowing ourselves the quiet and the solitude to let our pitcher fill to the brim.
Like the bubbles that emerge from beneath the river water, so too, certain springs are only tapped in me when I am alone. Like an artist needs to be alone to create, an author to write or a musician to compose, so we women need to be alone in order to again find that still axis within a revolving wheel of relationships, obligations and activities. Solitude is not the answer to this, it is only a step towards it. Perhaps if I can somehow keep this still axis, I can grab the hand of my friend, Solitude, and take her back to the city with me. I will have to hold on tightly though, as she'll easily get lost, but I'll try anyway.
It's time to start breakfast so I turn and head back towards the house. I feel the wind ruffle my hair, joyfully I am able to receive the nourishment of heavenly manna and realize that never am I less alone than when alone.