There are certain sounds a house makes when only one person lives in it.
I know the click the kitchen window makes when the wind changes. I know which floorboard near the stairs complains in winter, and how long the pipes murmur after I turn off the bath. At night, the refrigerator is much louder than it has any right to be.
None of these things bothered me at first. I simply began to recognize them.
Living alone has made me notice small things.
If I leave a pencil beside the sink in the morning, it will still be there when I come home. A book left open on the sofa waits at exactly the same page. Nobody moves the cup from my desk because it is in the way.
There is something pleasant about that.
Not freedom, exactly. Just continuity.
This morning I made coffee and carried it upstairs to the little room where I paint. The light was poor, so I didn't paint very much. I spent twenty minutes mixing a green I liked and then forgot what I had intended to use it for.
I wrote the color down in my notebook anyway.
Yellow ochre, a little blue, more white than expected.
My notebooks are full of things like this.
Recipes I rarely make twice. Names of flowers. Dreams that become embarrassing by lunchtime. Lists of things I need from the market beside sketches of hands, windows, birds, and people I saw once on the train.
Sometimes I think a diary should contain important thoughts.
Mine mostly contains evidence that I was here.
There is one cup drying beside the sink. One coat on the hook by the door. One pair of shoes kicked underneath the bench.
On the table there is a small brass candlestick I found at a secondhand shop last month. It is slightly crooked, and someone has scratched three tiny stars into the bottom.
I bought it because of the stars.
I like objects that have already belonged somewhere.
Old things don't ask to be admired. Their scratches are already there. Their silver has already darkened. Someone has repaired the handle, replaced the button, written a name inside the cover.
You don't have to be careful enough to keep them perfect.
Perhaps that is why most of the things in this house are older than they need to be.
The blue bowl by the window has a crack running through the glaze. My desk belonged to someone who apparently wrote very hard, because the wood is covered with faint lines where a pen pressed through paper. The mirror upstairs has gone dark around its edges.
I could replace all of them.
I don't want to.
By late afternoon the house becomes very quiet.
That's usually when I draw.
Today I sat at the kitchen table because the last of the sun was there. I drew the rosemary plant on the windowsill. It has become too large for its pot and leans noticeably toward the glass.
Halfway through, I stopped trying to make the drawing accurate.
It looked better after that.
When it became too dark to see the paper properly, I put the pencil down and made something simple for dinner.
One plate.
One fork.
One glass.
I used to notice the singularity of these things more than I do now.
Now they are simply the correct number.
After dinner I washed everything instead of leaving it for morning. I watered the plants. I closed the curtains downstairs and checked the back door twice, because I always check it twice.
Before going upstairs, I lit the little candle in the brass holder.
Not for any particular reason.
The rosemary had been restless all afternoon, and the house felt as though it needed settling.
By ten, everything was quiet again.
The pencil was still beside my notebook.
The blue bowl was where I had left it.
Upstairs, the old floorboard complained once beneath my foot.
I knew it would.
And I think this may be the thing I like most about living here alone:
I have had enough time to learn the house,
and the house has had enough time to learn me.