Lisa Boston Frye

                               Aging and the Imagination

                               

 

                                                                    Solitude

                            A Response to

                            Let Evening Come:  Reflections on Aging

                                                                    By Mary C. Morrison

                           

              This little book, Let Evening Come, is a pleasant little tome, but I would have preferred that the author, Mary C. Morrison, had slapped on a little mascara or lipstick before posing for the horrid photo on the back cover.  That likeness colored her words for me, and although what she said was  worthwhile and meaningful, I couldn’t really get myself past the scary visage.  Sorry.  Sometimes it sucks to be shallow.  (P.S.  I hope she’s not a relative.)  

              Moving past my tirade, I felt drawn to the passages about solitude that the author touches on.  I was enchanted by the tale of the farm wife who after 50 years of marriage, got a divorce.  She still likes her husband, but believes that one-half century of time together with someone is long enough.  She wanted to finally get some time to herself.  I totally agree with her logic.  A lifetime is not really that long, even when you do live to an age where you are the oldest one at the family picnic.  There is a time to be together and a time to be alone.  The farmer’s wife was very brave and forward thinking to decide at her age, that her years were limited and she needed to grab some space for herself before her hourglass ran out.

              Because I am a twin and have had children in three different decades, it has been a challenge to experience solitude in my life.  I do enjoy people and the energy of people but when I read what Mary C. Morrison writes about solitude and loneliness, I  began to wonder if it’s possible to have solitude at all during these hectic times.  Does everyone around you have to die before you are able to experience solitude for yourself?  Or should you just selfishly grab some alone time whenever you feel the need?

              I can remember days in my past when I have enjoyed solitude, such as the year I took off from responibility to live in a tent in the desert of Arizona, far away from people or things.  No electricity, no phone, no running water.  My bathroom was a shovel.  My friends were horrified to drive me deep into the desert blackness after a busy night working at the bar miles away.  We passed huge saguaro cactuses as wild dogs moved soundlessly across the rutted path, and the sounds of the coyotes yipyipped together in the distance.  My girlfriends stayed behind their locked car doors as I got out and lit the lamp inside the tent, waving them on as I settled in.   I listened to their car’s tires crunch further and further away until there was soundlessness, and the feelings of aloneness covered me blanketlike.  But I never really felt afraid or lonely.  I welcomed the silence, the stars huge all around me, the mountains jutting off into the distance.  I loved the feeling of exhilaration of being alone and so insignificantly a part of the world.  I felt fortunate in my little cabin tent to be given such gifts.  My soul sang in that atmosphere.

               I can understand what the author means when she extols the virtue of solitude in old age.  I have experienced it to a small degree for a short time in my own life, when I was younger, and I look back at that time with fondness and with gratitude.  I hope again to experience that excitement, that peace, that solitariness.  I am happy to learn this is one of the gifts of old age.  Let Evening Come.