End of Day

   Today is St. Patrick's Day.  I've visited with all of my family, either through FaceTime or in person:  husband, three children and spouses, and eight grandchildren. We shared greetings, well wishes, and meals, including a  corned beef dinner here.
   Everybody has gone back to their own life events, so there's no one here but me and the cat. The meal has been cooked, the dishwasher run, and I have no further duties or responsibilities. But stronger than ever is the sense of waiting.  Always stronger in the evening, and especially so this day. It's not an expectation, just a feeling.
   When I was a small child, I remember my mother would be in the kitchen cooking supper for when my father would get home from work at 5 0'clock.  Most of the time he rode as a passenger with a man who drove several others to work and back, so they were on a regular schedule. Once in a while my mother would comment, "Your father is late tonight."  Instantly my stomach would drop and I would go to the window and watch the headlights of the cars coming over the bridge, hoping that one would pull up to our driveway and deposit my father. I remember only the anxiety of the fearful watching, not the times he safely arrived home, which he always did.
     All through the years it seems I've always waited for someone or more than one person to arrive home. Years spent looking out the window, staring at the phone and willing it not to ring with bad news, listening for the crunch of tires on our gravel driveway, waiting to see if the glare of headlights would turn in or pass by. Now that is the job of others; I am free of it. But still the expectation is  there. In dreams, I even hear the door being opened, and somebody coming home.  In the words of the song, freedom is having nothing left to lose.