The house is quiet.
Boys are at school; husband is at work. It is just me and the dog who, without stimulation, is a world class lazy bones.
This quiet is so loud, it fills my ears the same way too much sound enters me, making it hard to concentrate. This silence is powerful. It envelopes me completely, making my breath loud, my heartbeat a drum. My thoughts scream and echo in the hollow space.
I met this silence once before.
Thirteen years ago, I opened my car door in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico after having spent 24 hours straight driving across Texas by myself. To stay awake, the radio blasted above the buzz of air conditioner and the roar of the engine. I sang along to the point my voice went hoarse. Crazy, I know. Why didn’t I stop to rest?
Well, you see, I was making time.
When I ended my trip in the Land of Enchantment, my legs wobbled at being stretched and stood upon. I crooked my neck from side to side, blinking at the bright morning light of the desert. Quiet wind whirled and whipped into my ears.
The silence.
I had never heard such loud silence before.
It blew my flip flops off, and it was several hours before I dared to disturb it, so I waited to check-in, waited to eat breakfast, and just sort of stood there, shedding clothing piece-by-piece until the silence seemed quiet enough to break. I checked-in to a teepee where I stayed for a few weeks, rather than the few days I had planned. I just kept breathing in that silence until it filled me full up.
Though not as spectacular as the New Mexican landscape, I recognize the silence in my house to be the same kind. I keep recalling lines from my favorite book of poetry (The Wild Iris by Louis Glück):
Human beings must be taught to love
silence and darkness.
It is so tempting to keep busy these days, to stay loud. Not just during the day, but well past the bedtime Mother Nature set for us. We turn on lights, scroll phones, watch the television, and discus the day until we reach the point of exhaustion. We crash into sleep before we even have a chance to touch the silence and darkness that each sunset provides.
Silence is a gift.
It can be frightening to unwrap all that empty space. The temptation is to immediately cram it with noise.
Is this what my whole life will be when my children leave to forge their own paths? Will they leave forever? What will my marriage be like when they’re gone? How fast will the next fourteen years pass? Will my new business fail? Am I good enough?
But if we can hold our fears back and resist the temptation to fill the silence,
it can fill us with a vast and peaceful landscape,
a sky wide open within us.
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