Yesterday I took a little slice of time and played around with graph paper.
I was planning my new studio. It sounds frivolous considering how little sewing I've done. I haven't done all that much knitting in the last week either, I think about 6 to 8 rows in 4 days. But of course I will sew and knit again.
Much of the past week has been spent coming to terms with the fact that my house will never be the same again and thinking about how best to accommodate the future. Oh, I am planning for G to come home, and it appears he will be coming home far sooner than previously anticipated. And although I want him to come home, I also know that home will never be the same. I am advised that he will come home with a walker, possibly a back-up wheelchair, and very likely 24 hour care, and at least night-time care. This means he will be confined to the main part of the house, that he will not be coming up the roughly quarter-flight to the master bedroom, that he will sleep in his own room with an aide or "sitter" on hand. I don't think he realizes this yet. I don't think my body and my soul have quite come to terms with this yet either, although my intellect is weighing the options and calculating the potential outcomes.
During the time G was in the hospital and now, at the rehab place, dealing with all the uncertainty has forced me to readjust to the house, to come to terms with it differently than before. The house seems so different from what it was but a few weeks ago. At first, I could only spend the evenings in the kitchen and the bedroom even though I could not sleep. Now I have reacquainted myself with the house and I have thought extensively about what changes needed to be made to make the house work for G when he comes home. And even though he is making great progress and will be ready to be home before I will have everything in place, he will still not be coming up the stairs and we will still have separate rooms.
Which still leaves me with a space that was once our space and which will now, by necessity, be my space alone. Night-time is the hardest. Our bed is no longer ours and it is haunted by his absence. It is quite possible that in order to cope with change I will have to take what was ours and make something separate, something which is mine.
And this is how I found myself with occupied with a tape measure and some graph paper making plans. My sewing room is in a bedroom right next to the master bedroom. It is is small 9.5 x 10 feet, although it is not the smallest "bedroom" in the house, it is the second-smallest. It will become my bedroom and the larger room, the room that was the master will become my new sewing space. It is larger, at 13 x 16 it is the largest private room in the house, the largest room that can be closed off from the rest by means of a door. All the public rooms are open to one another. It will be my new sewing space, and even though it is slightly more than twice the size of my current space, it will be fairly full, but I think a very workable space.
The seeds have been planted for this new space, but it is not my first priority, not yet. I still need to prepare for G's return; I need figure out exactly what will happen, and when. Perhaps I am still clinging to the hope that the guest room can become our room and not just G's room. I do realize that this may be a futile dream, but I am not quite ready to surrender. I also realize that regardless of what happens I will need to create a different space for myself, a space that is a new space, not a space haunted by memories. But I am not ready to embrace that space quite yet, just to acknowledge that it is coming.
