To make peace with becoming an empty-nester, I had to be at peace with myself

Historically, it requires a very high fever or a major stomach flu to keep me from tackling some project or other in any time not immediately claimed by work or family. Even when we travel, I tend to go off on my own adventures while the rest of the family takes a few hours of down time — I didn't shell out for airfare in order to nap! And certainly not in Edinburgh/New York/Kansas City. We might never be here again!

Indeed, it has been said by some who claim to know me that I simply don't know how to relax.

Well, for almost three full days I did nothing but relax.

I planted a few pansies and tidied up the bathrooms; when it began raining, I dealt with some leaks. I did look at some old photos, and then just put them back in the box. I gazed at both the linen closet and pantry and decided they were fine, just as I decided it was too cold to get rid of any sweaters and that my son could deal with his stuff when he was next in town.

When left completely on my own, with no demands and no one looking, it turns out I like to read novels and watch movies. I made some egg salad and soup but otherwise refused to cook. (A quarter-century of making meals each and every day for people who eat them in less than five minutes can curb one's love of cooking.) After my six-hour salvage run up the 5, I was not in the mood to drive anywhere, not even the gym, so I stayed in, worked out a bit on my own, finished knitting a scarf I had begun a year ago and read some more.

But I also did something I have not done for many years: I sat with myself, alone, and did nothing. No mentally thumbing through potential column ideas; no planning the summer or even scheduling the next week. No doomscrolling with its attendant internal rants over world events, no prophylactic worry about this child or that potential situation, no chastising myself for not doing all the chores I had planned to do or worrying if I was going to close the activity and exercise rings on my Apple watch.

I just moved around my house and yard in silence, talking only to my dogs, and instead of obsessing about the 90 million things I had to do, should be doing, I felt only peace.

When it started raining, I didn't even have to walk the dog.

A part of me had definitely been braced for a feeling of, if not loss, then dislocation. With my youngest looking at colleges, I thought these days would give me a preview of the time when my nest would be empty. But a three-day weekend comes with a clock — neither my husband nor my daughters were gone long enough for me to pine. It was a bubble, separate and exclusive, preparing me for nothing but reminding me of much.

That the day doesn't much care what you accomplish in each of its hours; that a healthy body, and mind, needs to be at rest once in a while; that the actual longest relationship you will ever have is with yourself so it's important to enjoy being alone.

Though when it stops raining, that dog does need to be walked.