Words That Hit Too Close To Home

I am proud to say that I am pursuing not only one of my convent goals, but one of my life goals as well. I have started on the long journey to read all seven volumes of Proust’s epic. I’m on page sixty of Swann’s Way. Proust is a twelve course meal, not fast food, and you must digest him that way. I expect to have to stay on this path for years before I can rest. I got through the first thirty pages of our young narrator’s extended agonies over not getting a good night’s kiss from his mother. It sounds like a silly way to begin a story, but there are passages in those thirty pages that are amazing. We have also attended the moment of the tea and the petites madeleines. As I was reading, there was a scene, a passage that hit a bit too close to home. Our young storyteller is introducing the reader to his Aunt Leonie. When the narrators’ family comes to Combray every year, they stay in her house. Aunt Leonie is a widow in failing health who left her an invalid. The author does not comment on if her illness is genuine or not, but what is clear is that her final years were spent in bed, complaining and looking out her windows to see what her neighbors were up to and then gossiping about it with her maid. The author describes her life thus:

My aunt effectively confined her life to two adjoining rooms, staying in one of them in the afternoon while the other was aired.
I am not anything like this woman during normal times. But right now, within the walls of my convent, my life is lived, for the most part, between two adjoining rooms. I also go outside now and again, but it struck me how retreat is not always a healthy thing. Sometimes it really is retreat from life. I am grateful I have a much better version of it.