I'm going to be 77 in October, which feels like... well, it just feels like a number, mostly. Though sometimes it feels like a very *large* number, especially on the weekends now. I was divorced at 55, which, let me tell you, was not something I ever anticipated. Not after 30 years with the same man, raising two wonderful children. It was a complete upheaval, a cataclysm, really. My whole social fabric just... unraveled. Some friends (the ones I thought were really *my* friends, not *his* friends or *our* friends) just vanished, like ghosts, and others made it very clear where their loyalties lay. It was a cruel sort of natural selection, I suppose, for friendships. I had to build a new life, from scratch, almost entirely new acquaintances, new routines. I got a little dog, a terrier mix, who was my constant companion for fifteen years, until last year. (I still miss her terribly, you know, that quiet presence beside you.) And then the children grew up. They went off to college, got married, started their own families, as they should. And I was so proud of them, truly, for establishing themselves. But now... now they only visit for the big holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter if it's convenient for them. And those days are a whirlwind, a beautiful chaos of grandchildren and laughter and too much food, and I cherish every second of it. I'm not complaining, not really. I just find myself staring at Friday evening, after I’ve finished dinner and washed the dishes, and the silence just... stretches. It's a vast expanse of time, two full days, sometimes three if there's a long weekend. I try to fill it, of course. I read. I do needlepoint (which is surprisingly meditative). I volunteer at the local library a couple of afternoons a week, which is nice, gives me a sense of purpose. But the weekends are different. It’s like the whole world goes off to do something important and I'm left behind, a bystander to everyone else's vibrant lives. I remember when my children were little, the weekends were a frenzy of activities – soccer games, birthday parties, trips to the park. The sheer *logistical planning* of it all was exhausting, but it was a good kind of exhaustion, a tangible feeling of being needed, of being an essential cog in the machine. Now, my role is… peripheral. And I understand. I do. They have their own lives, their own children who need them in that immediate, all-consuming way. But the feeling, this persistent ache, it’s a form of anhedonia, I think, this inability to derive pleasure from things that *should* be pleasurable. Or perhaps it's just the natural progression of things, the ultimate consequence of building a life around others and then finding yourself at the periphery of their lives. I just wish I knew what to do with all this... time. This profound, echoing silence.