Keep me company?

I don't like to be alone.

This is odd, considering the essentially solitary nature of most of my work activties and hobbies: I'm a teacher, sure, but there's a whole lot of quiet prep and grading to be done alone, and I have a whole semester every year in which to do my research, a semester described by most as delightful for its absence of people and people-related obligations, a semester of hiding away and reading. Not me. My door at work is nearly always open. In my leisure time, too, I read and read and read. Reading requires, of course, that we focus on the text at hand to the exclusion of all other stimulus. I also like to knit, and this too can require careful focus. I can, in fact, focus so intensely on these activities that repeated invocations of my name will ring across the living room unanswered: I am in the zone. But--but!--there I am in the living room, reading in the bustle even though the house is big enough that everyone can be on their own floor. Because I don't like to be alone.

When I moved away from home to attend university, the most startling and depressing change was my fundamental aloneness: I was no longer in a discernible family (or other) unit where I could plunk myself in the middle of ongoing daily life to do my own thing. And so I did a lot of homework in coffee shops, in cafeterias. And so I clung to my then-boyfriend, mooching time at his house, just to ... read a book while he watched TV. And so I pretty much half-moved into my sister's on-campus apartment after she had her baby. To not be alone. Like a crated puppy comforted by a ticking clock, I could only really calm myself if others were nearby, and preferably people I cared about. Alone together, maybe, but not alone.

My tendency to cling, to demand nearness, is exacerbated by stress, particularly by change: whenever I would move apartments or residence rooms, I always begged of my friends or my sister to come over. Not to help, I would assure them, but just to keep me company. To have someone sit on my bed while I took down posters and packed up candlesticks made me feel rooted even as my life was compacted into boxes. Poor Pynchon, too, had to deal with my ramped-up clinginess during my pregnancy: I so badly wanted him to be home with me, even if all I wanted to do was read the newspaper at the other end of the couch from him.

I was thinking of this the other day, my refrain of 'keep me company' when my sister came for a day visit. She's taking care of Miss Baby when Pynchon and I go to Cuba for a wedding in May, and so tries to come over fairly regularly to stay in Miss Baby's good graces. Her visit coincided with Pynchon's hard earned Day Off, a day in which he planned to vacate the house in the early morning and not return until the wee hours. It was a day, I have to admit, I was anticipating with some dread: "Yay!" I told my sister, "You can keep me company!" Now, taking care of Miss Baby is no longer really very taxing: she puts herself to sleep for naps, is of fairly easy disposition, eats well, and is amenable to outings of all sorts. But. She is not yet company either in the sense of keeping me totally mentally occupied, nor of providing quiet togetherness while I pursue my own activities. In fact, being alone with Miss Baby, for me, is very much alone indeed: I feel my aloneness keenly when she and I spend whole days together.

Don't get me wrong: we have lots of fun, she and I. I spend minutes at a time enthralled by her, and in any case devote myself willingly, ably, and cheerfully to the assorted babycare tasks of feeding, changing, playing, carrying. But other than those minutes in thrall, it's kinda long and, for me, very lonely. My own thoughts bash around in my head and the minutes slowly tick. I can't talk to her, nor can I sit quietly and read.

To my own sanity-preserving credit, I very early recognized this tendency in myself, and tried very hard during my maternity leave to have regular visitors. Visitors whom I assured would not need to lift a finger, and whom I promised to indulge in all manner of goodies and teas. All they needed to do was keep me company. And when they did, life was okay. I could handle it. In truth, in retrospect, it seems to me that the hardest part about my maternity leave was the loneliness. "Come keep me company," I begged of pretty much everyone I knew, and the hours of nursing and bouncing and changing and playing flew by. Alone, though, I soon grew sad and anxious, short of patience, and hated myself for it.

As Miss Baby gets older and more engaging, she becomes more and more a source of 'company' in her own right. But it'll be a while before I cease being grateful for visitors. Cease being cheered beyond measure that my sister will stay and sit for one more cup of tea while I cheer Miss Baby's exertions in the Exersaucer, or play peekaboo with her doudou.

For now, I admit that I can do it, all that this life requires, be strong, be brave, be patient--as long as someone will keep me company.