My mother and grandmother knew the difference. What most considered as shy they understood as being quiet. When the teachers would report, “She’s very shy, my mother would say, “She’s just not loud.”
Maybe it was because there were so many of us at my grandma’s house. It didn’t seem possible to get on top of the noise, so I went under. With a whisper. And my grandmother responded, not with a voice, but a gentle thumb that slid across my rouge cheeks, and I was saved.
It was the same in my mother’s apartment. Worry was not met with a bang. A poem rang volumes over the din of trouble. And quietly we moved, tip-toed gently, into heart’s joyful noise.
In our current world, where we exchange volume for truth, can we still hear the difference between right and wrong? Between hurt and kindness? I wonder what would happen if we just took the time to listen…
We learned early on at Washington Elementary that so many of our problems could be solved by sitting quietly. If we were too hot, “Sit quietly,” the teacher would say. Trying to memorize our times tables, it was important to “tune everything else out.” Even in our excitement of knowing the solution to the problem on the chalkboard, she never called on the ones that “Ooooh, Oooooh, Ooohed,” — no, she smiled and pointed to the steady hand raised silently in the air.
It followed me through high school and even college. I could never do my homework in front of the television, nor with the music blaring. The answers, for me, always came in a whisper. The same has held true for everything, I suppose. Recovery, hope, dreams, even love, has never arrived as the Tabernacle Choir, but more of a hum, a bird song in my heart, that to be heard requires the silencing of all the doubt, fear, and chaos that surrounds us.
There will always be the chatter of those who are so eager to shout, “you can’t,” “you shouldn’t,” “you won’t.” To them (and mostly to myself) I say in a gentle hush, “Oh, but I am.”
