Selected Silence

She spent the day alone, waking late in the morning, taking her time to get out of bed. She'd gone to bed late, fell asleep with a book in her hand and a light on overhead, both cats curled up close beside her with nothing more than a light chenille throw to keep her warm. She spent the night in dreams, dreams of planes and places, people she wanted desperately to see, people she wished she'd never see again, feeling even in dreams that her lot in life was to fight for every little thing she wanted.

She puttered around the house, picking things up here and there, the trail of KC's progress through a succession of rooms like crumbs to follow. Her daughter - like she had been herself, was like a summer storm, quickly wreaking havoc on the order of a room, while her own room threatened to spill out into the rest of the house in its quest to take over more space. She smiled at the thought as she put a load of laundry in the machine, humming to herself as she tidied up the kitchen with grand thoughts of what she should do with the day.

But the answer was that she really wanted to do nothing at all. She'd been so busy lately, running here and there, letting KC have a gaggle of girls over the weekend past, that all she really wanted was one lazy day. One day to do exactly what she wanted, even if what she wanted most was nothing at all. For a while she opted for her chair in the reading room, finishing the book she'd started the night before in-between putting in another load of wash, hanging the clothes from the previous one, putting art supplies away that had been left on the desk the night before, and taking a long hot shower that quickly went from hot to cold when the neighbor's downstairs decided to take a shower at the very same time...

The remainder of the day she spent somewhat lonely, wanting to pick up the phone and call someone, but then not really in the mood for conversation at all. She simply didn't have the energy to deal with anyone other than herself today despite how selfish that might sound. She simply wanted a different sort of quiet. The sort of quiet you can only get when you tune the outside world out.