My daughter will graduate from high school next year.  She's determined to go away to college.  I have two kids, and she's the younger.   So, I will be alone in less than a year.  I hadn't really thought of it that way until the other day.  I had been thinking more about what her schedule will be like next year, and the college application process, and how I will manage to afford it as a single mom, and where she will end up going.  I never thought: I will be alone.

It terrified me for a minute.  I haven't been alone in 22 years.  I don't really remember what it's like.  I have adjusted to being a working and writing mother.  I started writing in the middle of the night when they were babies and woke to be nursed, and I couldn't get back to sleep afterwards.  And I learned to write in the midst of noise and activity, I adjusted to the rhythms of being interrupted every few minutes.  That went on for years, until they got older and started going away from home a lot to hang with their friends or do after-school activities.  I got used to writing in silence again.  But the staccato rhthym of my writing time is still there.  I never know when I will be interrupted by the arrival of three or four kids, a series of urgent phone calls that are part of a complex scenario that changes minute to minute, a trip to go pick someone up, a run to the store to get something one of them needs desperately.

What will it be like to be alone again?  Will I write more, or will I be stunned by the sudden absence of this kid energy, by the erasure of my role as the mother in a house with children?  Will I be unable to write when I am confronted by my new, unfamiliar self?

I'm hoping I will embrace this new phase, and this new freedom.  This time, I am free with experience.  It should be very different than it was when I was in my twenties.  I hope to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise for me as a writer, as an adventurer, as a believer in chance and serendipity. 

But no matter how hopeful I manage to be, I know this is going to hurt.  Big time.