Last week while I was teaching the final week of my summer classes, most of my family was on vacation. Kramer Family Beach Week has been going on with my husband's side of the family forever, or at least it seems like forever because it started when our kids were babies. I've been to every one of these trips — if not for the whole week, then at least for a day or two — with the exception of this year. The semester's end simply didn't line up. Our middle child couldn't attend Beach Week, either, because she had a school choir trip overlapping later in the week, so being home also meant that I could send her off well.
I hugged and dropped her off at the school early Thursday morning. The rest of the family would be returning from the beach on Saturday afternoon. In between, I had roughly 56 hours (minus the hours when I was on campus teaching) in my own house, by myself.
Do I remember the last time when I had 56 hours by myself in my house? No, I do not. This is because I haven't had 56 hours at home by myself for 20 years. It felt perfectly natural and entirely unnatural all at once.
It was so quiet. It was so clean. I cannot overstate this last point: IT WAS SO CLEAN. For 56 hours everything was in its place, and nothing was out of place, and if something was out of place it's because I was the one who had been using it; therefore, everything's whereabouts still made perfect sense to me.
Mealtimes were a breeze. I was in 100% agreement with myself at all times about what to eat and when to eat it. Did I cook? No, I foraged through the refrigerator and assembled meals: 7 baby carrots and hummus, a slice or two of chicken lunch meat, a piece of cheese, some blueberries, a pickle. (I've done this with kids home too, of course, but then I call it charcuterie to convince them it's something intentional.)
When I finished my grading each day — it was, frankly, a bit of a bummer to be actively employed while living out my Home Alone fantasies — I'd shower, get ready for bed, then watch TV. What did I watch? Doesn't matter. What matters is that I held the remote control. Apparently, I don't do this often, because I barely knew how to work the thing. Input HDMI 1? Sure, that sounds fine.
Sometimes I wandered room to room, looking over the house as if it were a vast empire. I played my music loudly. The computer chair remained pushed in when not in use. No shoes were piled at the garage door. No kids turned on the shower right was I was headed upstairs to take a shower. Space and time — two currencies that often seem in short supply — felt abundant.
On Saturday afternoon, I sat at the dining room table with my laptop, plugging in final grades for my two classes. It's the culmination of any semester to hit "submit" on final grades, especially during this expedited summer session that aggressively crams 15 weeks into 6 weeks, with those 6 weeks starting when you're still tired after the regular academic year.
I saw the "grades submitted" popup flash in the upper right hand corner of my screen. It is finished, I thought, as I tapped my papers into a neat pile to file away. Mid-paper-organizing, a mere 30 seconds after hitting "submit" and before I could even take a deep breath, I heard a sound that I had grown unaccustomed to hearing in just 56 hours.
It was the garage door opener. The beachgoers were back from the beach.
So much came through the door at once: people, voices, bags, a suitcase, a Sam's Club-sized box of leftover individually packaged assorted Sun Chips, beach towels that somehow were still damp, leftover sunscreen sprays and bottles, a stack of napkins from a fast food joint from the ride home. I walked down the hallway and tripped over shoes that hadn't been there a minute ago.
All back to normal.
