Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9309080415
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Alan Sorensen Editorial Page Editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My wife and children deserted our home this month to vacation far away on an island in Maine, where my mother-in-law spends summers.
By the time you read this, I'll be up there, too, taking a few days to drive back with them to Roanoke, visiting relatives along the way.
In the meantime, though, I will have spent a good part of last month in enforced isolation, relieved only by a week's vacation with the family, work since then, and the kindnesses of pitying friends. I have had enough.
Not that I'm bitter, mind you. I'm happy the kids were swimming, boating, climbing mountains, enjoying July under Maine's sheltering pines.
I haven't minded hanging around the office all hours, watching television alone in our un-air-conditioned house, occasionally taking a book to dinner at Pizza Hut.
Nor am I the kind to wallow in self-pity just because I'm bereft of loved ones - though recently I have taken to driving to the tunes of the late, lonesome Hank Williams Sr.
``Take These Chains From My Heart,'' ``Weary Blues From Waitin''' and other favorites on my old cassettes wind away the tiresome commutes, offering solace of a sort. Hank Sr. laments the ``Lost Highway'' while I negotiate 581.
The problem is: I just don't like being away from my family.
I'll grant you that being alone, in moderation, can afford small pleasures and revealing insights.
If I want to sit on the porch and play guitar for two, three hours - maybe try to figure out the chords for ``Cold Cold Heart'' - who's to stop me?
If I decide to enjoy a heaping bowl of Grape nuts for dinner, who's to question it?
Still, it is a little appalling to discover how quickly, absent the company (and scrutiny) of others, one is liable to fall into a rather debased and uncivilized condition.
William Wordsworth wrote poems about returning to nature: ``When from our better selves we have too long/ Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop/ Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,/ How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.''
But does solitude really bring out our better selves? In the state of nature, I find, beds go unmade and the insides of refrigerators sprout strange organisms.
Base tendencies, of course, are more prevalent among the male half of the species than among the better half. For unseemly reasons, man left alone seems particularly prone to revert to slobhood. This is not an excuse, just an observation.
Fortunately, it isn't the only insight to punctuate my monastic meditations. During my family's absence I also have been reminded, for instance, that humans aren't alone in the universe.
You can't help but notice this if you share, as I have, an otherwise empty house with a bird.
This bird - Patrick is his name - is not amiable. He pecks at fingers; he swells in a huff. But he is the new pet of my 9-year-old daughter, Laura, who phones regularly to see how friendly I'm being to the thing.
With her, it isn't enough to feed the bird, change his water, dangle playthings before him, not to mention applying this newspaper to the undignified use in his cage for which unhappy readers have long recommended it.
Gifted with limitless verbal skills and love for animals, Laura insists I have to talk to Patrick.
I mostly say ``hello,'' ``want some pizza?'' and other silly things that seemed even sillier when I started saying them to the bird in the first quiet days after my family departed.
I have since grown accustomed to the creature, though occasionally he still hisses at me. With small deposits left on my shirts after, as instructed, I've allowed Patrick to perch on my shoulder awhile and peck at my neck, the bird reminds me that I am not entirely alone.
Other reminders come by phone, to and from Maine. The calls help assure the telephone company's financial stability. But, while reuniting our family's voices, they also underscore our separation.
My lovely spouse, Mariana, still sounds pleased to hear me on the line. She asks if I've turned in the soccer-league form, watered the plants, paid the phone bill.
Lucy, our otherworldly 6-year-old with freckles on her nose, told me Wednesday about a book she's reading, ``All About Sam.'' She also whistled over the phone. Having never mastered this skill before, she was obviously proud. I wished I could see her.
Nell, the precocious 4-year-old in braids, refused for days to talk with me after we were separated. When her mother finally tricked her into coming to the phone, and she realized it was me, she claimed she was Lucy.
No you're not, I said.
Yes, I am, she said.
This was Lucy, she insisted. She just had lost her voice.
Whereupon I told her I was Granny, and this elicited a polite squeal.
When I reminded Nell that I would be joining her in just a couple of days, she said she wanted me to come the very next day. I liked that.
When I said I had to stay to work the next day, she asked if I liked work. I replied that I did, but that I'd rather be with her and her mother and sisters.
She asked, if I would rather see her, why was I going to work instead?
I changed the subject.
A few weeks in summer is not a big deal, I'll admit. Still, I am happy to report that, when you read this, a house sitter will be conversing with Patrick and I will have been reunited with Mariana and the kids.
After we return to Roanoke, I will come back to this job to attend to the smart highway, the governor's race, the North American Free Trade Agreement and other such matters.
Right now, these editorial pages - like Hank Sr., the bird and the phone - are poor substitutes for a close-by family.
by CNB