You know what I am craving? Seriously hanging out chomping at the bit craving? I think about it always. I wonder when I can get some more. I plan my day around the times I can have it, and when I don’t get it, I get crankier than a two bob watch and no its not sex although a bit of that wouldnt go a stray …
No what it is. Is Silence.
Just simple silence.
Once the bells ring at school, I walk to my car, shut the door and I just sit listening to the dulled chatter of the kids standing outside the door. Now my car is ten years old, so the noise is a dull roar, but the chatter is not directed at me. No one is asking me a question, telling me about their cousin Jack or what they dreamt about.
Don’t get me wrong I love hearing about all this stuff. Love it my job as a TA, love my job as a mum but it’s never one child telling me one thing at a time. It’s all together with varying degrees of shrillness as they try and drown each other out. It’s the same at home. It’s never quiet. They yell at each other, the calling of my name, request for food, wanting to know when dreams will be met- we can go to America right mum? sure baby we have no job but I will find a away, craft projects, games to be played and tattles listened to. And when they are not at it drowning each other out it means someone is up to something or worse. Having said all of that I dread the day its nothing but silence because that day will come and so why whinge about it now?
Motherhood or parenthood is a job full of sensory overload. Someone is always touching you and talking to you. Its a good thing but then when you cant find that silence that balance its not. It can be come tiring and explosive and you need to find it just ten minutes away from it.
But I have found a place my car. It’s a place I have often run to for solitude its a toss up between the car and the laundry because the laundry isn’t a place my kids visit often which means its lego free. I often think that all good things can be done in a car- the ugly cry, making out, the making of children whilst difficult many have been made there, new adventures, new starts and the re-catching of breaths. I reckon a good car sales man would point these things out when selling a car.
I sit in my car for longer than necessary fluffing around with stuff still in silence before reversing out and driving home in silence nothing to be heard but the sound of the engine.
The drive home is 13 minutes long. Thirteen minutes of pure unadulterated silence.
I get home, and I don’t automatically get out and rush in to see my children. I sit in the old tin shed for a good five minutes. It’s dark, and it intensifies the silence. The silence coats you if you let it. It’s soothing and rebuilding.
Then with an energy rebuilding sigh, I open the doorstep out into the light and into the arms of my B1 who without fail runs to me at the gate and cuddles me. Those cuddles are rebuilding too and so I know I can do it all over again.
Is there anything your craving?
xx Deb
