benja22

Every once in a while, about thrice per two years, my wife leaves me at home and makes a pilgrimage to her motherland of Wisconsin.

She is never gone for long, usually less than a week. With a properly stocked refrigerator it is an amount of time that I can survive with relative ease.

A day or so before she begins her trip I start to fantasize about my time alone. I know I’ll miss her but at the same time I think what a few days left to my own devices will be like.

I’ll smoke a pipe and read Faust while the New York Times is open to the crossword puzzle. I’ll strike academic looking poses as some brilliant computer program I’ve written quietly compiles on a black and green console screen on my desk. I’m not a programmer but I hope someday that skill will come to me. Preferably by getting struck by a lightning bolt that releases some freak savant ability in my brain. (This is also my plan for learning how to play guitar and to speak Spanish.)

And then the day comes. She leaves.

Reality bites.

I move around the house like a confused ghost. I open the fridge thirty times a day and don’t pull anything out of it. I sleep. A lot.

I look at my dog and he looks back at me forlorn. I can’t tell whether I am to pity him or if he is pitying me. Taking him for a walk seems to be a great triumph over boredom so we walk often.

Time seems not to move while at the same time, time seems to waste.

Several time during the day I do manage to strike an academic pose. Usually while I’m staring at the coffee pot and deciding whether or not I should make some. In the end, I decide not to and turn to stare at the sink. I’m certain I look like I’m having deep thoughts while I do this.

So this is what it’s like to be left to my own devices. I stand around in pajama bottoms and socks that are just a bit wet from whatever I stepped in on the kitchen floor. A stinky old robe hangs on me and I wish I had bought a pipe and a copy of Faust.

I tell myself every time that next time I’ll be better prepared. I’ll have books to read and maybe hire some old lady to bring me a covered dish and look sympathetic. I’ll have a project.

The truth of course is that I’ll spend my time waiting and staring out the window.

I think I’ll walk my dog now.