A brilliant orange dawn shimmers up from the bay, casting long fingers over the quiet neighborhood, over business-like cats trotting briskly up the sidewalk, over frosty parked cars and my withered garden, over the almost-bare maples etched against a paling day.

The house is Sunday-morning quiet . . . T is abed; the cat has hustled back inside to join him. The furnace mutters, the clock ticks, yet the house's low clamor casts a spell that is like silence.

Today is the last day of the holiday week, the first morning since Monday that I've awoken without my children in the house. I spent much of yesterday resettling our space: washing guest linens and reorganizing storage areas, reaming out the attic under the eaves to make room for the portable mattresses. We've only been in this house for seven years, but nonetheless the attic was filled with child-related clutter: college-era bins containing never-to-be-used-again dorm sheets; boxes of middle school paperbacks. I left the books (who am I to sort through another person's indispensables?) but ditched the dorm detritus, and now the attic is actually useful and mostly accessible. It's also reminded me that I'll need to tackle another winter chore: the maw of useless items known as the basement. But that is a story for another day.

For the moment, the house is tidy enough. The upstairs guest room has returned to a teeny-tiny study. The downstairs guest room has returned to a teeny-tiny den. Today I'll go grocery shopping (my family consumed a shocking amount of bread, Kleenex, and toilet paper this week), and then I'll spend time at my desk, mulling over student pieces and prepping for my upcoming Monson class. I might work on a poem. I might rake leaves. I might make turkey soup. I might watch the Bills game. I will read William Trevor's Selected Stories and drink tea and fold laundry and do the crossword puzzle. My life feels too spacious, but I know that's a temporary condition. In a day or so I'll be as overwhelmed as usual.