Now deep into my second week of being alone, I haven't gotten over how normal everything has been. The silence, of course, continues on and on, but I've come to inhabit it. I spent Sunday cleaning and staying indoors, trying to take a day off after so many days — too many to count — of working. When no one is waiting at the iron gate of our terrace house, I feel more at home in my office on campus. There's no pressure to get anything done when the day and night stretch out uninterrupted before you. Another day and another and another.
I dreamt that my family died in a car accident and then feared saying it outloud. Silly fears, of course: the girls appear on the other end of a Skype call. Everything is fine, only glass separating us, like visiting your father in prison. What's the metaphor there: ʟᴏɴᴇʟɪɴᴇss ɪs ᴄᴏɴғɪɴᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ, sᴏʟɪᴛᴜᴅᴇ ɪs ᴄᴏɴғɪɴᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ? The neighbours brought me chicken curry, handing it over the fence.
I wrote in the last blog of the moment as a node, connecting the experiences of the past with the future. I'm not sure if this is the best image. The moment is a photograph; the past, a sketch on tracing paper laid on the photograph. The doorway to the house, if I look long enough can be inhabited with memories of the girls coming in and out. You can see it if you want to.
Or I can see the future: me coming home in two years, to this same house, becoming a home. What pasts with inhabit this place in the future.
So I sleep, I wake up to the call to prayer; I open the doors again to let a grey morning light in. Every day is one day closer to everyone being back together: how many hours will it be before I take my children and wife for granted again?