Dec 28 2008
The Feel of Silence
It’s quiet here. Not something that happens often, but a thing so complete when it does that it makes me shiver with the promise of the future. It is most assuredly the sound of the future for a mother who is watching her children grow. Silence is the double edged sword that we seek and we fear. It is the thing that we want most but know that it holds the things that we fear.
It holds the promise that something that should not be happening is. Ask any mother, any parent really, and they will tell you that quiet in a house full of children in the middle of the day is very rarely a good thing. And is that quiet comes from a yard, oh that has a double concern. That holds that slight whisper of fear that they are either at something they should not be, or the terror that they are no longer there. Mischief is quiet and loss is silence.
It is that quiet that wakes me from a full and hard sleep in the morning, even when I have been up till dawn. It is that sudden stillness of my house that makes my breath catch and my heart race, and puts me awake with my feet on the floor before I even think. The Monsters go quiet right at the heavy moment before they wake, and that is what wakes me. I can move quietly from room to room, touching finger tips to sleep flushed cheeks and ponder the quiet that will be.
Even when they sleep the Monsters make noise. There is the soft huffing of breath takes, sighs and the noises of restless rolling. They talk in their sleep, to no one, to each other, to everyone. There are little snorts and snores. There is comfort in that sound. And it is that thing that I think I will miss the most. Someday when that silence is complete, and the Monsters are grown and gone.
I wonder if it will wake me then, or if I will have finally earned a full night’s sleep that does not come in fits and starts with the restlessness of a child’s whispers and sighs. I am not sure I look forward to knowing. Today I am glad the silence is no cause for concern, a temporary reprieve as they pour over coloring books for a second day. I am not ready to have that silence redefine me.
