My family sat down to watch All Creatures Great and Small last night, the new series on PBS starring Nicholas Ralph and Samuel West (shout out: West played Prince Caspian in the old-school BBC Narnia series, oh yeah). It’s a show that my teens as well as my younger kids can appreciate, and it’s been rare lately to find a show we can all enjoy together on our traditional movie night.
In the episode, there’s a scene where the housekeeper, Audrey, has just seen the men out the door. The 60 seconds which follow are an indulgent fantasy: Audrey sits down on the couch in front of a fire. She pauses there, smiling at the golden retriever curled up at her feet, then gleefully opens her book (an old, lovely one, the kind that crackles when you open the front cover). And that’s it. The story moves along from there. It was delicious to watch. My mind sort of stayed there in the parlor with Audrey, wistfully thinking how luxuriant it would be to sit in a quiet room— a fire seems a bit indulgent, not necessary, but delightful nonetheless—with a good book, uninterrupted.
And that’s where I’m at in life, the kind of busy-ness where sitting in a quiet room with a book looks like the lap of luxury. I know very well that’s a near-impossibility for me at this stage in life, and to be honest, if I woke up tomorrow morning and my family surprised me with a day-alone-reading-by-the-fire, I know exactly what would happen: I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. On the rare occasion I do have a quiet morning or afternoon (so very rare, mind you), I feel almost overwhelmed by all the things that I could be doing or should be doing that I sort of freeze. If I were granted a day-alone-reading-by-the-fire by a genie, this genie would also need to clean my house, do the dishes, scrub the bathrooms, and organize my garage (and quite possibly a few other things) before I felt the freedom to sit on a couch with a book.
My mind is usually so preoccupied that I forget words. That’s right, just words. Whole nouns will escape my memory. My mind sometimes reads like a fresh mad-libs page with blanks substituting actual nouns and adjectives. Sometimes I find myself saying things like, “I need to go that place to do that thing,” or “Hey, fruit-of-my-womb, can you put that thing in the thing with the thing?” I’m lucky enough that my children and husband can, for the most part, anticipate my meaning. My head is an overstuffed sandwich with mustard oozing through the bread and the pickle sliding out the side. While sometimes I want (and do) just pause and cry, or sneak away to the dog-park for a cigarette (P.S. I don’t have a dog), I’m also overstuffed-thankful for my life. Like, really. I love hanging out with my family.
I recognize that sometime in the not-too-far-future, I will be home alone, and I will sit on a couch with a book, or rather a stack of books that I’ve been meaning to read for decades. I won’t be as put together as Audrey from All Creatures Great and Small; instead of a wool skirt, stockings, and cardigan, I’ll be wearing the synthetic soft elastic clothes of a modern and confident middle-aged woman. Instead of a dog, there may be a cat or two. And I’ll probably sigh—even for just a moment—as I remember bygone days when my home was a madhouse.