Celebrating Time Alone: 1 by Lionel Fisher

Author:Lionel Fisher [Fisher, Lionel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Body, Mind & Spirit/Inspiration & Personal Growth
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
Published: 2009-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

look out upon the hills.

I have encircled me only from necessity...

My heart is in the highlands,

riding with the wind.

I fill my eyes with salmon dawn and silver eve,

Wanting to believe I am not bound

by this surround...

My soul is o’er the valley,

resting on the wind.

“This was self-acknowledgment,” Hamlin says, “clearly a time to fly, but my wings were rusty, and I fell instead into the escape hole of drinking too much wine, to oblivion. Shadow Woman, a peak in Wyoming— me. Obscured by clouds of my own making, I hid from my beloved children as well—until confronted. From addiction therapy, I dared venture back to the field in which I’d earned my master’s in social work—counseling others. But this newly self-assertive me was no one my husband recognized or wanted to see. The struggle had taken its toll. I had waited too long. When he left, I heard clang again, as in a recurring nightmare, the iron bars of ‘solitary confinement.’”

“With my children grown and happily away, when I subsequently lost my job in a federally sponsored pilot program whose funds had run out, and at age sixty-four seemed obsolete, I lost the final bolster of feeling ‘useful.’

“In a turbulent river, could I find a quieter place downstream to swim ashore? Whom to love? Whom to touch? Could I just finally be? There was still a feast before me—was I to be kept from it like the gluttons of Dante’s Inferno, my hands chained?

“Could I see I wasn’t bound—unless in a cage of my own imagining? Could I, who had always sought permission, free myself, give myself permission at last—to eat what and when I wanted, to sleep whenever I chose, to read endlessly, to play, to go back, if need be, to recover my lost childhood?

“I still have a passion for investing in children, to see that they’re encouraged from early on to believe in themselves, to say—in time—what they need to hear of their uniqueness, to abet their respect for others, but, even more, to value themselves, to step-by-step become human beings in the best sense of the word.

“Can I do this for myself as well?

“With my grandson, I am revisiting childhood awe, rediscovering sing-song rhymes, pretending not to understand Monopoly so he can ‘explain’ it to me, reading fairy tales as if I’ve never heard them before, and ‘oohing and aahing’ as we watch Pinocchio. I am completely captivated by him. He brings me ‘gifts’—pine cones, shiny stones that have caught his eye, and one day even a dead and bloody duckling! He is truly present. We touch.

“Even without his company, I am delighted at sensuous awakenings. Sometimes I buy myself shrimp, a ‘sinful’ self-indulgence, sometimes giant Hershey almond bars! I shuffle through autumn leaves, pick them up and give them to myself, just for their unique shapes and colors, as I used to bring them home, a bouquet for my mother. Having no one else to call on, I happily hammer and nail. I change light bulbs with serene confidence.

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