A DAY ALONE

15th April, 2015

I’m in my sixth hour of being alone at home today. For two weeks, since Joel’s surgery and ensuing virus, the only time we’ve been apart is when I’ve gone grocery shopping.

Warming Joel's slippers by the fire.Tomorrow will be our one-year anniversary of living on the farm. This time last year last year we were a whirlwind of activity readying for the big move and although by the time we officially moved in we had been living in Europe for more than a year, our time had been divided between Provence and Tuscany where, in both places, we were living in furnished homes. Still, we had been living outside our native tongue for long enough to understand its impact on us as a couple, mainly a kind of dependency, which neither of us were used to. For starters we are the only two people we speak English with. After a few months the dependency began to wear on us, to the point where the shared language began being used for nit-picking.

This adjustment to spending 24 hours a day together, year round, after 22 years of spending the daytime hours blocks away from each other, worked to bring us closer together but also made us chafe at the bit. As artists, solitude is a pre-requisite. Sometimes hours can be spent just pondering an idea or staring into space until something of creative interest appears in the frame. All it takes is for another person to enter the space and the process, at best, is interrupted and at worst, completely destroyed. So we have had to learn over the past couple of years how to work in the same space in silence. In other words, we’ve learned how to be alone together.

But that all becomes moot when one person is sick and the other is the caregiver. The first few days were a cinch. Care and concern and the desire to be of comfort and help not only came easily but were their own altruistic reward. For the first week, I took pride I my capability. Not bad for an old dame, I’d think, as I made Joel breakfast in bed, shopped for groceries, schlepped the laundry out to the line, cleaned the house, prepared lunch, made the bed, plumped the pillows, stacked firewood, weeded the garden, folded the laundry, cooked dinner, did the dishes and made sure he took his meds. All the while feeling gratitude and knowing that Joel would…has in fact…do the same for me.

So how mortifying to discover I was only good for one week before breaking down like an infant. How horrifying to find myself suddenly resenting the poor man, muttering under my breath about how it was all right for him, at least he got to do his work between naps; choosing photos for an upcoming book, Skype-ing with the studio in New York, talking on the phone with his gallerist etc. What about me? It didn’t matter how hard I tried to excuse or forgive myself, telling myself, Maggie, of course, you’re tired you’re in your late 60’s…sometimes I’d make that nearly 70…you have a failed thyroid, you’re living like a peasant on a farm, blah, blah…the truth was harder than that, as it so often is. The truth is that there’s another pre-requisite for being an artist, besides solitude: selfishness; the near involuntary need to put one’s creative work ahead of all else. I used to experience this when my daughter and stepson were young and I’d get impatient helping them with their homework, or worse, rushing through a bedtime story because I just had to get to the studio.

So, when Joel, who is 95% better, offered to take himself off to the hospital today to have his stitches removed, plus go to Siena to do some errands, I felt giddy with excitement at the prospect of six hours alone. After he drove away I made my self a cappuccino and sat outside listening to the birds and watching the red-tipped new leaves of the pomegranate tree vibrate against the immaculate blue sky.

Then I wandered back inside to my desk to continue work on a new book, but suddenly felt overwhelmed so went back outside and looked at a book of Giorgio Morandi’s still-lives, searching for inspiration from a spouse-free artist who had been renowned for his solitude. And all the time I’m feeling…what? Not exactly depressed, more like pointless.

After two weeks of not working I’d idealized the creative process. I’d forgotten about the bit that’s hard work; forgotten about the doubt, frustration, struggle, all of which intersperses itself with the joy of making something out of nothing; of being totally lost in time and space; of being free of neurosis and even self-awareness. I slabbed some runny cheese on a cracker, ate a square of sugar-free chocolate and managed another few pages of revision, and then I went back outside. Relax, I told myself. This is the first day to yourself in weeks. Maybe you don’t have to do anything. Maybe it’s okay to just lie on the terrace, look at the landscape and listen to the sheep.

I lay back on a lounger prepared to soak up the sun and that’s when I saw something move out the corner of my eye. It turned to look and there, all alone, a pair of Joel’s trousers flapped on the clothesline. But they weren’t just a pair of pants on a line. They were the absent spirit of Joel. I may have gasped the pain was that sharp. The pain of missing my man and the possibility that one day, any day, I might be missing him for the rest of my life.

I went back inside, got my journal and pen and sat in a wicker chair under the pergola, where I am now re-connecting with myself and all of you, once in a while looking at the burgeoning herb garden, every stem of which is stirred by a sudden breeze.

P.S. Next week, Joel and I will be spending several days in Bologno inside the studio of Giorgio Morandi. We have been commissioned to make a book about his objects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLSNfDO2gJM

AND…I urge those of you who receive my posts via email to click on the title of the post e.g. today you would click on A DAY ALONE. This will immediately take your to the blog-site which not only is more attractive but the photos will actually appear the right way up :)