A couple of weeks ago I was captivated by this passage in Rules of Civility (set in 1930s New York City):“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You’ve carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are—cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets underway; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The superego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into an ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.
“It happens to all of us. It’s just a question of how many stops it takes. Two for some. Three for others. Sixty-eighth Street. Fifty-ninth. Fifty-first. Grand Central. What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows.”
These words started me thinking about the benefits of this unusual time. It’s true, dropping the mask is one of the great freedoms of isolation, especially for a reserved introvert who doesn’t even realize the mask is on, but there are so many others that have been more…soul-filling.
First, I haven’t had this much time to read since I became a mom. In fact, when Gigi was born, I stopped pleasure reading altogether for more than four years. I stopped not because anyone made me, but because I’m completely undisciplined when caught up in a good book. But then my friend Julie coaxed me into reading Unbroken, and I was lost. Utterly. I was out there on the raft with Louie, and I neglected my family and all my motherly duties until I finished it. Then I binge-read 15–20 other books. I don’t know what everyone ate during those six months, but they all seemed to live through it.
For a bookworm, this week has been like an extended stay on a tropical island—it has warmed my soul. Besides Rules of Civility, I read The Geography of You and Me, back issues of The New Yorker, and lots of Genesis and Matthew. And began Possession, Letters from Skye, and Aimless Love, a book of poetry by the affable Billy Collins. (It’s a sickness of sorts.)
Next to reading, I love writing, especially poetry. But to have anything to say, I need thinking time to process life. On many days, when school is in full swing, a trip to the bathroom by myself feels like a retreat. This week is the opposite: lots of thinking time, which is why I’ve pestered you with so many words.
For a homeschool mom—or any mom—to be able to refuel in the middle of the school year is an unheard-of luxury. When we get back to school, I’ll have a little wind in my sails, which I hope will keep us going all the way through summer because that’s how behind we are.
And most important, isolation compels me to be dependent…on God and man. I can easily misguide myself into thinking that I can function on my own, but that independence is a damaging illusion. Even introverts need to live in community, and we are all created for utter dependence on God. I love how this first question from the Heidelberg Confession, an unusually personal confession of faith, puts it:
That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.
With body and soul I belong to the Lord. And when all else is stripped away, He is the real solace of isolation.