Fiona Looney
The teenage kick of being home alone for the first time since February
There is no notice; no time to make plans. It happens in a heartbeat. I am sitting on my patio, soaking up the rare and wonderful late summer sunshine, when the front door closes for the last time. Still, it takes a minute: in the absolute silence within, I skip through the household manifest and suddenly realise that, for the first time since February, I am alone in my own house.
Now, I’m not going to put on a Poor Me shift. I realise that there are thousands of people in this country and beyond whose default setting is solitary confinement and wish it were otherwise. I know how much my mother appreciates hearing her front door open and one of us hollering our presence. And obviously, I do spend a lot of time on my own — not in a Greta Garbo Want To Be Alone way, but as the inevitable byproduct of a great deal of walking, running and cycling. But that is a different, planned headspace. This is something else altogether. For the first time in six months, I am Home Alone.
Is it possible to feel like a kid in a candy store in your own suddenly empty house? I wander into my kitchen, all sorts of halfbaked schemes flooding my brain. I stroke the photo of The Dog, because truth be told, for the past 14 years, I’ve never really been alone in this house. Then I look around. I could re-decorate, or at least paint over the chip in the wall left by other people moving the television around. I could clean up, I suppose, but the house is fairly tidy already because in spite of what would be more comedically convenient, I run a tight ship. I could inspect the normally off limits Boy’s quarters — The Boy being much funnier than I and as a consequence, living out of a catastrophically chaotic bedroom — but that way lies madness. I briefly consider throwing an impromptu party but I literally can’t remember how many people from how many households we’re allowed have over today and besides, I’m fairly sure I don’t have enough friends to reach the quota. The Best Friend, who usually lives conveniently close by and can be totally relied upon for an impromptu glass of wine, is in Wexford and everyone else is either in Cork or Kerry. Still, the words ‘free gaff’ bounce around my giddy brain, even as I remind myself that the whole point of the free gaff of my youth was that somebody else would have to pay for whatever damage ensued.
I could, of course, do that thing they sometimes do in mystery stories where you completely rearrange the furniture in order to gaslight a family member and ultimately benefit financially from their being committed to an asylum. But it’s a lot of work, I have no idea how wide this unexpected window of solitary opportunity will be and since I bankroll everybody I live with, I’m not sure it would ultimately pay a dividend.
So I preserve my energy and their sanity and look back out at my patio, suddenly recalling those mad, first sunny days in April, when The Boy and I jostled each other for the premium sunny spot, all the time trying to keep the prescribed two metres apart. And I think of the many, many days and nights since then; time no parent expects to ever have with their grown-up children — singing, dancing, eating, drinking, crying, fighting, laughing through a crisis none of us could have possibly dreamed up.
On that first night Leo told us to stay in by the wall — that St Patrick’s Day speech like no other, apart from all the ones since — I went online and bought the last chiminea in the British Isles. Given that it was promised by an outfit in Northampton — Bert’s Garden Furniture, or some such operation — I had no great faith in it ever arriving, but there it is on my patio, the remnants of whatever the last night of blurry craic was in its belly, an unexpected monument to Covid. And in the shed behind it, my Dad’s ancient lawnmower, unearthed during a clear-out of my mother’s shed and soon to be collected by the Museum of Country Life, which is planning a Covid Clearout collection.
Nobody told us there’d be days like these; nobody warned us there’d be so many of them. And even as I’m contemplating it all, and the very idea that being suddenly home alone at the age of 53 would feel like such a teenage kick, I hear the first key in the front door. And so it goes on.