I am lost.  It’s as if I am a sleepwalker woken up in another room.  Even the face of my waker is a stranger to me.  Nothing is where I left it; my books closed and unread, abandoned in piles at my bedside.  This Autumn, a season of such unexpected warmth and sunshine, has left me in darkness.  I am constantly cold.  Some days I leave my coat on until my daughter comes home from school. I tear it off and shove it into the closet when I hear her footstep at the front door.  I bake and I cook but I don’t eat.  While my family swirls in and out of this little house I am left standing at a center that I cannot hold.  But, I am trying, so very hard.  For the first time I am so separate from my children that sometimes I don’t even say goodnight to my daughter, embarrassed that at 8:30 I can’t keep my head up anymore.  She is in her room, chatting, working, singing Christmas carols in a high, sweet soprano, and I am in mine, a single lamp puddling light on a book that won’t be read. I am homesick and I can’t go home.