Before I could stop myself the word ‘hello’ escaped my lips. In a sing song, warm voice it rang out, even as my eyes caught sight of the empty shoe tray, the empty coat hooks. There was a fraction of second between the eruption of my excitement and the knowledge that no one was there. I had walked into the house mid thought, having spent the drive home talking to myself, feeling all of the things the day’s events brought to the surface. I knew exactly what I wanted to tell the kids, what I had learned, remembered, understood so much better than before.

Caught up in it all, I momentarily forgot they weren’t with me that weekend.

I stood in the doorway, cold air wafting in around me, hearing my own voice drift, then fall to the floor, not having met a response.

The row of hooks, mounted at various heights, meant there was one for each of us. Overtime, as first my son, then my daughter, grew taller than me, my coat migrated lower and lower. Now, other than the little pink jacket, all the hooks were empty.

That little pink jacket belonged to my son. I mean, it had belonged to him a long time ago. It was passed down to my eldest daughter when she was little, and most recently to my youngest. A label inside had each of their names written on it; a hand-me-down that stood the test of time and was loved by every child that inherited it.

He had chosen the little pink jacket when he was about three years old, nearly fourteen years ago. Pink was his favorite colour. He wore that jacket for several years, being small for his age. He wore it until he was teased at school. We had a few conversations about how any child can like and wear pink, but I also didn’t insist. I knew there would be so many more gendered battles to be had.

My youngest had her full snowsuit and so she left the jacket at home.  

The house was silent.

I dropped my bag to the floor, pulled off my boots and hung my coat. I thought about the many times when I was exhausted and pulled in a thousand directions, that I had craved for a moment of quiet. This was never how I imagined getting the occasional solitude I desired.

Now that the kids were with me half time, I had so much silence; so many days the house was almost lifeless. On many of those days, hours would pass without me uttering a word. To whom would I speak? I missed the rhythm of life with my children, even when everyone was doing their own thing, their presence had a sound, however faint.

That afternoon, I had just come home from a wonderful event at work. My heart was filled with questions and considerations. I wanted so much to share them all with someone; not just someone, my someones.

The emptiness that greeted me was jarring. It wasn’t just the absence of their voices, it was also the absence of the pitter patter of their feet, the absence of their own outbursts of joy. I took a deep breath to hold back the tears.

What a terrible price, I thought. What a terrible price we’ve paid. There was no point in trying to understand this new reality for anything more than it was.

I walked into the kitchen, pulled the rice cooker out of the cupboard and set a pot of black-eyed pea curry I had defrosted earlier on the stove to reheat. Two cups of dry rice. I washed the rice, gently rubbing it between my hands, the grains rolling against each other, loosening the starch. I rinsed it over and over until the water ran clear.

Two cups of dry rice is four cups of cooked. It’s only me, I remembered, who will eat all that rice? And yet I could not stop myself from making it. I’d portioned it out and eat it throughout the next week.

Most of my childhood I had watched my mother make food for seven. Not just that, it was food for seven for at least two days, because time was scarce and between several jobs she couldn’t return to the kitchen for hours every day.

And for a time, I had prepared food for a family of five. I didn’t know how to scale down the quantities for one, at least not yet, and it just didn’t make any sense. Why do all that work only to repeat it again the next day?

I turned on the rice cooker and lingered in the kitchen.

I hadn’t yet learned how to fill the time. You know, that time that all of sudden appears when your life has fallen apart. Other than cooking and cleaning, when I wasn’t at work, I didn’t know how to be. It sounds absurd I realize, but this had been my life for so long; work, cook, clean, work, cook, clean. And be with my kids. That was everything.

In the midst of and after the separation, I had acquired a library of self-help books. Most of them said that one should find new hobbies, go out with friends, discover activities they like. I read the books, I understood the assignment. I was familiar with the advice, even as I had no idea how to begin to follow it.

The problem, in my experience, was that none of the books talked about all the time, all those hours, where neither hobby nor friends could distract you from. No matter how much you filled those gaps of silence, there would always be some left open; wounds for which there was no treatment.

And not just short gaps, a few hours here and there. There would be entire days; once all the laundry was done and you’d washed the floors, windows, and walls, that you’d be left only with yourself.

Myself?

Yourself wasn’t a bad thing, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that yourself was a stranger. Yourself was the person you had apparently become unknown to you, while you were busy doing all those things, forgetting who you were.

And hobbies? Who had time to nurture hobbies while raising children, building a career, keeping a home? All of this, and I’m not even mentioning the fact that it was all done while negotiating an existence that neither your culture nor your partner wanted to see you succeed in?

Who had the freedom to explore and express their hidden talents or passions? Who had time or energy to devote to friendships, when they were expected in the kitchen twenty minutes after work?

I felt it rising. Not anger, frustration, resentment, although any one or all of those would have been valid. I couldn’t name the emotion, except to say that I was experiencing it more and more often. Like an awakening, a knowing without naming. And it overwhelmed me.

I remembered the open bottle of wine that had been on the fridge door for weeks. I shouldn’t be drinking, I thought, I mean I hardly drink a glass a month, but it’s not advised on these new meds.

Surely one glass, midday, between doses won’t impact anything. I was bargaining with myself. I shouldn’t be drinking because I know I’m doing it to drown the pain of unbearable loneliness.

One glass, surely one glass will not interfere.

It was such a cliché, the whole thing. The professionally dressed woman, the rice cooker bubbling through its little air hole, the single glass of white wine, the interior monologue about how best to cope with life. Life? That thing I was living, that was unrecognizable to me, massively disrupted.

Does wine qualify as companionship?

If I drink alone and tell the story of my day to no one, would it be so terrible? How much of a loser move was this, to recount my own day to myself?

How much I wished I had been stronger years ago. Known better.

I often wondered what life would have been like if my mother had lived. Would everything have been different? Or just some of it? I couldn’t wish for anything, a change in past events, that would ever take my children away. So I couldn’t wish for my mother to be here now. Her death, as it happened in the story of my life, was perhaps the most significant catalyst of all that followed. Good and less good.

But I couldn’t help but imagine if her presence might have protected me.

It’s a futile exercise. I had played it out in my mind a million times. The whole imagining what things might have been like if. There is no if. There is just what we have now. A few empty hooks and a little pink jacket.

Too much rice, I made far too much rice. I’ll be eating it for days.

And silence, occasionally broken by the hum of the forced air heating or the fridge motor.