Rice notes that for many women, solo living isn’t just practical—it’s liberating: “Women tend to take care of the lion’s share of domestic duties even in two- income households where both parties work full time. For many women, staying single after marriage is freeing as they no
proof that loneliness and liberty could coexist.” She found it in women like Chiyo-ni—and Emily Dickinson, who called solitude “the banquet of the mind” while writing 1,800 poems in her Amherst bedroom. Dickinson’s handwritten recipes for black cake and coconut cookies, scribbled
longer have to take care of their partners or children for the first time in their lives.” Patricia’s version of freedom? Letting the dishes pile up while she paints, or spending hours debating Petrarchan sonnets with her book club—a group of widows and never-married retirees who meet weekly at the library. To her, Golden Girls wasn’t a comedy, it was a prophecy. Patricia’s hydrangeas—those unruly blooms she once fought to keep—now remind her of a haiku by Chiyo-ni, the 18th- century Japanese poet who traded societal expectations for a life of solitary creation. After losing her husband and child young, Chiyo-ni shaved her head, became a Buddhist nun, and penned verses about dew- kissed morning glories with a clarity that only solitude could hone: “Morning glory / the well bucket-entangled / I ask for water.”
alongside drafts of “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”, resonate with Patricia’s own juxtapositions: the accordion scales echoing through her quiet house, the single placemat set with Florentine china for her morning coffee. “Genius isn’t the point,” Patricia insists. “It’s about refusing to shrink your world to fit someone else’s edges.” Solitude, of course, isn’t all haikus and hydrangeas. Some nights, Patricia’s “banquet of the mind” is a Real Housewives marathon, her laughter bouncing off walls that once absorbed decades of Louis’s football commentary. She’ll sprawl across the bed like Cleopatra on her barge, limbs starfished in a silent rebellion against fifty years of middle-of- the-night elbow negotiations. (“I’ve earned the right to hog the duvet,” she says, grinning.)
I WANTED PROOF THAT LONELI- NESS AND LIBERTY COULD COEXIST.
”
Downstairs, Sprinkle snores atop his needlepoint throne, undisturbed by the flickering glow of reality TV—a modern indulgence Emily Dickinson might’ve envied, had 19th-century Amherst offered Bravo.
Centuries later, Patricia understands. She discovered Chiyo-ni’s poetry in a used bookstore two years after Louis’s death, the collection wedged between how-to- survive-widowhood-type manuals she’d never opened. “I didn’t want survival tips,” she says. “I wanted
Patricia’s journey mirrors a broader
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