She remembers her younger brother, Johnny, telling her comfortingly, "You are not the average All-American girl." But she also recalls, more achingly, in the sixth grade all the other girls on the playground chanting, "S.C.! S.C.!"-meaning "Solitary Confinement!"-in their refusal to include her.

     "Am I ugly?" she remembers asking herself. "I had freckles, wore glasses and orthopedic shoes. But I know now it was my sadness that drove them away."

     Hurt deeply by having an absent father, a clinically depressed mother, and an abusive uncle-much more deeply than she would realize for a very long time-"like similar lost people, I never had a childhood," Hamlin relates. "I was a little adult and an uncomfortable older adult. The world was not as it should be if good will prevailed."

     "Having little structure at home, I found a haven in school where I thrived on its predictability. Asking questions and learning was valued, and there always seemed to be answers. But in social situations, I was a misfit, often becoming confused and speechless.

     "In college, I chose a major in sociology, a minor in philsophy, but took every English literature and writing course I could cram in, not conscious at the time that this was what my creative self really craved.

     "Aside from skating and dancing, which I sensed were in tune with my deepest inner rhythms, and soccer-the only team sport I ever loved, not for the winning but for the running-I never learned to just play.

     "But I did learn well how to wait. Waiting became my mode-someday, I told myself. If I stayed safe, took few risks, said and did little that might be criticized, if I had no rough edges, others could slip by me. I would become invisible, unthreatening, 'nice.'

     "Of course, waiting became tantamount to collaboration with the enemy-my hidden self. Though my heart often trembled, I wore a mask of calm.

     "I married late, infinitely tired, and for all the wrong reasons. I loved his hands and his smile, wanted to be touched, but did not know how to touch. I got what I paid for-no rewards except for three beautiful children, part of my longing, however undeserved. Still, they were easy to love, and I felt reverent toward them. I thought I could be a better mother than I had been a wife.

     "When we moved for the fifth time in as many years to a house with a magnificent view but in another strange city, three thousand miles away from everyone I loved, I wrote a poem:

     If you find me not within these walls,

     Look out upon the hills.

     I have encircled me only from necessity...

      My heart is in the highlands,

     riding with the wind.

     I fill my eyes with salmon dawn and silver eve,
 
     Wanting to believe I am not bound

     by this surround...

      My soul is o'er the valley,

     resting on the wind.

     "This was self-acknowledgment," Hamlin says, "clearly a time to fly, but my wings were rusty, and I fell instead into the escape-hole of drinking too much wine, to oblivion. Shadow Woman, a peak in Wyoming-me. Obscured by clouds of my own making, I hid from my beloved children as well-until confronted. From addiction therapy, I dared venture back to the field in which I'd earned my Master's in social work-counseling others. But this newly self-assertive me was no one my husband recognized or wanted to see. The struggle had taken its toll. I had waited too long. When he left, I heard clang again, as in a recurring nightmare, the iron bars of 'solitary confinement.'"

     "With my children grown and happily away, when I subsequently lost my job in a federally sponsored pilot program whose funds had run out, and at age sixty-four seemed obsolete, I lost the final bolster of feeling 'useful.'

     "In a turbulent river, could I find a quieter place downstream to swim ashore? Whom to love? Whom to touch? Could I just finally be? There was still a feast before me-was I to be kept from it like the gluttons of Dante's Inferno, my hands chained?

     "Could I see I wasn't bound-unless in a cage of my own imagining? Could I, who had always sought permission, free myself, give myself permission at last-to eat what and when I wanted, to sleep whenever I chose, to read endlessly, to play, to go back, if need be, to recover my lost childhood?

     "I still have a passion for investing in children, to see that they're encouraged from early on to believe in themselves, to say-in time-what they need to hear of their uniqueness, to abet their respect for others, but, even more, to value themselves, to step-by-step become human beings in the best sense of the word.

     "Can I do this for myself as well?

     "With my grandson, I am revisiting childhood awe, rediscovering sing-song rhymes, pretending not to understand Monopoly so he can 'explain' it to me, reading fairy tales as if I've never heard them before, and 'oohing and aahing' as we watch Pinocchio. I am completely captivated by him. He brings me 'gifts'-pine cones, shiny stones that have caught his eye, and one day even a dead and bloody duckling! He is truly present. We touch.

     "Even without his company, I am delighted at sensuous awakenings. Sometimes I buy myself shrimp, a 'sinful' self-indulgence, sometimes giant Hershey almond bars! I shuffle through autumn leaves, pick them up and give them to myself, just for their unique shapes and colors, as I used to bring them home, a bouquet for my mother. Having no one else to call on, I happily hammer and nail. I change light bulbs with serene confidence.

     "I follow my heart, not my head-my feelings, not my thoughts. I am drawn to the simplest pleasures-geese winging across the changing sky, raindrops on roses, the sound of my children's voices. I melt with the snow and play with frisking dogs.

     "I look into each passing face and accept others for who and where they are in time, not needing them to accept me-though with an old stubbornness, I must confess, I still look for those who seem to have an inner life.

     "How far have I traveled in this new direction? I no longer count the years. I've been told I don't look my age, but that's because I've 'never lived in my face' before-the Irish in me, I excuse myself.

     "But my soul is as old and as new as the millennium. This year I am two thousand years old, celebrating all I know of this time-span-space and time I've learned from Einstein. I welcome that space is my new marker-though not cyberspace, an enigma to me.

     "I welcome silence from the voice that used to cry wait. I start each day searching the sky for all its portent. I light candles and simmer cinnamon sticks on the stove. I listen to my cherished classical records and to the Beatles, turned up as loud as I please, not just because I am, indeed, getting a little deaf, but to let the music possess me-take me all the way to Porphyry's spheres. I am comfortable with mystery. I postulate that if God is, hopefully, not a huge computer, then I'm sure He's a great musician!

     "I write poems to what I see and love. I write down for my children all that touches me. And I've given up planning. Today, I think, I'll just be...a tree, if I like.

     "I'll pretend I'm the first person in the world, besides Kilmer, to discover the wonder of trees. Today, I'll identify with that lonesome pine. I'll hold up my piece of sky, seek the sun, turn to the light, draw sustenance from a land that seems barren but has given me life.

     "I'll testify to persistence and offer my frugal shelter if there be those who need it. If none, then I will stand alone. My roots are deep; I am firmly grounded; I may bend in the wind, but I will not fall.

     "I will, of course, someday be gone. I will die, but then I hope my loved ones will honor the place where I once stood, their landscape now, and be comforted that I have finally found all that I sought-acceptance and peace. Perhaps my oldest son will remember that I once bought him a T-shirt inscribed, 'Be patient with me. God isn't finished with me yet.'

     "I wear that T-shirt now."
   
This article is excerpted from Lionel Fisher’s new book, Celebrating Time Alone: Stories of Splendid Solitude (Beyond Words Publishing, Spring 2001), which records the emotional and spiritual triumphs of men and women who have found amazing grace alone.  At a time when more of us than ever are living alone—an estimated 40 million Americans at the turn of the century—we continue to seek our happiness and fulfillment, our answers, our very identity in others, points out the author.  His book affirms that it’s all right to be alone, to want to be alone, even to be lonely at times because the rewards of solitude can make the deprivations so worthwhile.  Fisher, who also writes a newspaper column on the art of being alone.  Reach him at beachauthor@hotmail.com.

© 2001 Lionel L. Fisher.  Reprinted with permission of author