As I write this blog, I am incredibly aware that my house is empty. Clare, my quarantine buddy, is going back to Wexford, and my community members haven’t arrived yet. It’s a drastic change from my situation over the summer, where I lived with my mom in her tiny home. A month ago, I wanted nothing more than a bit more space, and now I want nothing more than that empty space to be filled with my housemates.
I really enjoy visiting my mom in Georgia. We joke a lot about how cramped it is, and there is some truth to that, but there’s something graceful about the smallness. We spend a lot of time together, in each other’s space. I like sitting on the end of her bed and talking before we both go to bed at night, I like getting into the rhythm of waking up and going to sleep at the same time, and I like sitting down on the sofa to eat dinner together. There’s no door to close myself off from the world when I want to be alone, and we have to deal with issues as they come up. And I’m never really by myself.
I moved from that environment to a mini-community with Clare, which involved a lot of laughter, movie watching, and restaurant delivery. There was a lot of grace in those two weeks of quarantine. We had to spend the first week in isolation from one another, but it was still a comfort to know that she was there in her room. For me it was a symbol that the other rooms in the house would soon be occupied. I’m still hopeful that they will be, but it was nice to have a friend to fill up a bit of the empty space.
At the time of writing this, I’m somewhere in between quarantine and entering the world again. I’m allowed to leave the house now, but I won’t return to Newman University Church until tomorrow morning. Most of the day was still spent indoors, tidying up the house and doing laundry. There’s grace in this space as well; I have a moment to myself to breathe, to pray, and to reflect on how I’d like to challenge myself this year. A lot of my days are filled with noise: talking, the TV, my phone, the traffic, etc. But in this moment all I can hear is the hum of the dishwasher behind me.
I’m ready for tomorrow, when I get to see people I love and go to mass in person for the first time since I left Ireland in June. I’m also ready for my community members to be here, so that we can spend entirely too much time together and help each other grow. But I also know that it’s important to pause and appreciate this in-between moment and all the grace that will come with it.
I pray that soon I’ll be sitting in a kitchen that’s full of laughter and sound instead of silence. But for now, in an empty space, I’m going to lean into this quiet moment.
