The Sounds of Silence
As I sit here, writing, I'm aware of the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock, the hum of the CPU, the fact that D, for some reason unknown to me, has his alarm go off at 12:00 p.m. to NPR each day (which it just has), and the occasional rush and tumble of the piggies.
There can also be whispers of wind whirling about this part of the house, the click of the heating coming back to life, or the crank and splash of either the dishwasher or laundry, but none of those sounds are intruding right now.
I'm revelling in my solitude this weekend. While I do have an enormous amount of paper work to do in terms of taxes, bills and other of life's inanities, I spent a full hour and a half at Cost Plus World Market, gathering ideas for how to change our living room while spending as little money as possible, and I look greatly forward to settling into an armchair and continuing my research.
And then I prompted Charity to prompt, and I get to work on that. And read hers. Yeah!
And I've been catching up with friends.
You know, there are some women who feel they lost themselves when they got married. They were no longer one; they were now part of a "two." I felt that way, briefly, after my sister died. I was driven into a spiral of panic about my life and my choices which created many useless and stupid thoughts and deeds.
But those days are long behind me.
Thank goodness.
Despite this, though, there are times when this solitude is just so very precious to me. While I welcome the two-ness of my marriage, and the three-ness of my immediate nuclear family, and the SIX-ness, lol, of my extended kiddoes, whom I wouldn't trade for the universe, silence can be golden.
And just now, even with NPR chirping in the background, it is.
