Leaving Home

The last daughter leaves for college tomorrow and then there will be no one home but the old ‘uns. I thought I had been preparing myself for this event with some care, but I realized last evening that I was wrong. Yesterday began the exodus of her friends to their respective schools, boarding trains and planes and loading up automobiles for the long trek mostly east, and I suddenly realized that it was not just the absence of AR that I had to consider, but the loss of a whole world of people to whom she was connected and to whom she connected me. They were going out and I was remaining here: my dinner table would not see their like again. As I hugged each, I parted with some consistency in my life.

And so last evening I looked more fondly at the black cat with whom I have entered an uneasy friendship. He comes about usually in the morning hours early—he waits for me outside my cabin door at 5:30am—and I offer him sufficient breakfast. And then the cat heads off for the day—I haven’t the foggiest idea where he might go. Perhaps he has another home and another feeding hole. Perhaps he just wanders off into the shaded woods for a quiet, restful day; he may even pick up a mole or mouse for lunch! And at the end of the day he makes his way back to the cabin, and sometime about dinnertime he sits before my door looking in with hungry longing. He speaks to me. When I offer him dinner he partakes eagerly, but now, rather than head off somewhere else he sits down outside my door—sometimes on the mat and sometimes on the rough grass—and relaxes. And though he remains somewhat edgy when I walk in and out of the door—arising and moving some steps away from me—he returns quickly to his comfort. As I return to the cabin I take the roundabout route to keep from startling him, and last evening he didn’t move when I returned with my tea. He accepts me and grants me leave to enter.

Of course, he does not replace my daughter and her friends, but it is nice to have a regular  companion to meals.

I will miss them.