I live alone. These things happen. Your children grow up, your husband leaves, and then you are a household of one. This is a happy story, I promise, but I do need to say this: Get ready, ladies. You may be next. And if and when you are, please, please try to remember what I am telling you now. You know how you never have enough time? You will have it. The very thing, that precious, out-of-reach, gleaming pot of gold you have been longing for! You will even have time on your hands. If you are wise, you will see it as a gift. If you are like me, you will have to do some stumbling around to get there.

Like so much in life, this story is about dinner. Dinner was how I spent almost 30 years of my life—making dinner, serving dinner and eating dinner with my family. Slipping chopped carrots into the meat loaf so that vegetables would be represented in the meal. Guiding dinner table conversation so that it yielded something loftier than burp jokes. And then, after dinner, overseeing homework, making sure children went to bed at a decent hour. It was the life I had chosen, and I think I was good at it, and most of the time I loved it. So when this ritual ended, I was totally unprepared for the expanse of time it left behind. With a few exceptions, I hadn’t spent an evening alone since my twenties. And now I had this huge hole where dinnertime used to be, this gaping Grand Canyon in which nothing was expected of me. Good Lord, what was I supposed to do?

At first, I couldn’t shake the feeling, hardwired after all those years, that I should be home. The light would fade at dusk, and I’d think, I’m supposed to be… Read the full story at More Magazine.