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We were having dinner in a favourite restaurant; one that we go to about six times per year, whenever we’re in this certain town.  The owner knows us by now because Josh and I have been going for 17 years, and we’ve been bringing the twins for at least 10 of those years.  She usually swings by to catch up with us at some point in the meal.

This time, she started asking all sorts of questions about the twins.  Their age.  Whether they got along.  Really, all of the questions were fine, and they were politely answering them, making conversation.  And then she looked at me and said, “These two are your only kids?  A girl and a boy.  Good for you.  You don’t need any more than that.”

And then everything at the table stopped.

It’s as if we all turned into stone people; like someone had stepped on a land mine and we had heard the telltale click and now we were panicked into stillness.  She left the table, flitting over to help someone else.  We stared at each other.

Sometimes you say something.  Sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes you say something back to make them feel what you are feeling.  Sometimes you say nothing at all and carry the feelings with you into the night.

As someone who can’t talk herself into sleeping in a tent anymore (my camping days are over), I was enthralled with GQ’s article about the capture of Christopher Knight.  He lived in the woods for 27 years, supporting himself by stealing — about 40 times per year — from people’s homes while they were away.  He entered the woods when he was 20.  He left the woods at 47.

Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night. He said he didn’t know if his parents were alive or dead. He’d not made one phone call or driven in a car or spent any money. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the Internet … He engaged in zero communication with the outside world. He never snapped a photo. He did not keep a journal. His camp was undisclosed to everyone … He was an uncontacted tribe of one.

That’s the starting point.  The rest of the article unpacks what happens when the author tries to connect with Knight; first through letters and then showing up at the prison. (Knight goes to prison due to the break-ins.)  He visits the place in the woods where Knight slept, and explains how he got through 27 Maine winters.

Why.  That’s the question that keeps looping through the article.  What would make someone leave the world behind and live on their own for so many years that they forget how to speak, how to look at people, how to navigate a conversation?

Knight admits:

Isn’t everybody, he said, seeking the same thing in life? Aren’t we all looking for contentment? He was never happy in his youth—not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. Then he discovered his camp in the woods. “I found a place where I was content,” he said. His own perfect spot. The only place in the world he felt at peace.

When he can’t physically return to that spot post-prison, he recreates it by withdrawing while living in the mainstream world.  He’s here, but he’s not really here.  He has no connections to other people.  No words to share or ones he wants to hear.

It’s an interesting counterbalance to the Instagram world.  If we can accept the idea of someone finding their contentment in gathering followers, we should be able to accept the idea in someone who wants no followers, no friends, no family, no connections.  Not something I would choose for myself, but I was fascinated by the glimpse inside the world.

I recently read My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan.  The opening was fantastic, but then… well, let’s just leave it on the positive: the opening was fantastic.  There was also a single bright moment towards the end of the book.  The main character needs to make a choice.  She makes the choice, and then says this on page 316:

I can’t finish. I choke up. It turns out, the act of making a choice, of choosing a path, doesn’t mean the other path disappears. It just means that it will forever run parallel to the one you’re on. It means you have to live with knowing what you gave up. Which isn’t a bad thing; if anything, it only serves to strengthen my resolve.

We’ve all made choices in life — maybe the best possible choice in a difficult situation — and had to continue on the path knowing the road not taken is running parallel to the one we’re on.

It makes me think of when you’re taking the Jersey Turnpike, and you see I-295 through the trees.  You’ll forget about the other road, and then the trees thin for a moment and you spot the other cars on the road not taken.  The two roads aren’t perfectly aligned; at times they go off in two different directions.  And then you glimpse the other road again.

I made a choice to stop treatments the second time.  It was the best choice in that moment; we got on our right road.  It doesn’t erase the other one.

I felt everything looking at this incredible photo project documenting pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and neonatal death.  Each picture features a woman and part of her story.  She’s holding a blackboard where she has written the least helpful thing she heard after her loss.  You’ve heard all of them: How many children do you have?  When are you going to have children?  You’re so lucky!  You have one of each.

It was the wrong baby.

That’s the one that started the tears.

I am someone who likes — actually needs — a lot of time alone, which isn’t to say that I don’t get lonely.  I do, especially when a social event comes with a plus-1 and I realize that I don’t have someone to bring with me who would enjoy it.  Or I see a bunch of friends getting together without me due to social media.  I get lonely, despite really liking time alone.

So I was reading an article on the difference between loneliness and aloneness when I tripped over this sentence, and it was like a needle being dragged across a record:

“Perhaps that’s why children are sent to their rooms to be alone as punishment. And adults without families are automatically pitied.”

There is no further clarification about these universally pitied adults.  Are they single people who are unmarried?  Because once you’re married, there are two of you, and two is a family.  Are they couples who have lost all parents and siblings (if there were any to begin with)?  Or… are they a single adult or a couple who doesn’t have children?  Because coming on the heels of that first sentence, that’s how I read it.

I know this isn’t the point of the article, and I’m sure it went on to make some lovely points, but I stopped reading because (1) no one assigns a feeling to me without knowing me and (2) there is nothing to pity about adults without children.

No.  No.  A thousand times, no.