Friday night. Deep winter in New England (according to the calendar, but not the thermometer). All the things one could do, places one could go like salsa dancing at the old veteran's building (an old building, not one inhabited by old veterans ) a few towns away. There aren't as many options as there are in NYC, Tokyo, Paris, or any number of other metropolitan areas. But here, too, close to Northampton and Amherst, there are multiple choices and opportunities to be social. Most of the time, I choose to stay home—like tonight.

I light several candles, my way of invoking a cozy fireplace. The music that feels just right is the chanting of a mantra, enveloping me in meditative energy, which is what I need now. Most weekend nights, thoughts cross my mind, sometimes scurrying like mice, other times stampeding like a herd of large, loud antelope. These thoughts accuse me of being perhaps not antisocial but most certainly asocial. I consider the truth of this and, not sure, settle on the sofa with a stack of books next to me that all week I have fantasized reading on "the weekend." Up for water, then back down to relax.

Here's where I have to insert something about relaxing. I was never taught how to. It was never modeled by my immigrant parents—not in the farmhouse of my childhood, nor in the suburban Philadelphia duplex where I lived in my teens. On the farm, the pink sectional sofa (for which my parents had saved for years) was shrink-wrapped in heavy plastic. I did not know the word shrink-wrapped then, nor did I know that sofas were meant to be sat on by anyone except for "company." Under the sofa was a Wall-to-Wall Carpet "like rich people have." The Wall to Wall carpet, referred to like it deserved homage, was a non-descript gray color the color of sidewalks. We were not allowed to walk on it just as we were not allowed to sit on the pink sectional, even though it was wrapped in plastic. It was necessary to walk on a portion of the carpet to get from the kitchen to the two small bedrooms, so a rubber mat was laid down for the purpose of treading lightly between rooms with minimal disturbance to the living room. Reserved for company that we rarely had, the Living Room was not lived in, which is an irony I do not think I noticed at the time. Nor did I notice that nobody relaxed.

Relaxing was dangerously close to being lazy and everyone knew that there were great perils in being lazy. It was one of several unofficial commandments: Thou Shalt Not Be Lazy. So maybe this is why it is such a big deal for me to stay home and get cozy on my pale aqua-green cushy sofa. I, too, saved for my sofa—for two years, so I wouldn't have to buy it with a credit card. After it was delivered, I did not sit on it for two weeks. When I shared that with a friend, she suggested we have a sofa-welcoming party and we did, inviting two other friends, all of us sitting together like peas in a pod on the new sofa. I cried.

So maybe I am not asocial, just a happy camper deliciously alone in my small farmhouse (not the same home). A year ago was the first time in my 61 years that I have lived alone—neither with parents, roommates, husbands (consecutively), nor children. My youngest who comes home holidays and summers is (for now) living in a residential school. Some nights, like tonight, the silence is so delicious, the solitude so vast and nourishing, that I remain in my abode alone rather than go out on the town or even just into town. Who knows? Maybe there is a season coming in my life when I will put my boat in with all the other boats and enjoy rowing gently down the stream, merrily. That sounds good, too.