In the silence

Sometimes in the silence just after the girls have gone to sleep, the lack of noise, the deafening call of my name ad infinitum suddenly over, I feel the solitude the most.  Not because I am missing the girls, they are right in front of me sleeping like angels on clouds.  It is because it feels like the spooky quiet after a really great concert.  The energy, the pulsating heat going through and around my body, and then stillness so eerie and otherworldly that I am sure I have been abducted by aliens, taken to another planet, and sent back to earth with some sort of message that I don't yet know.  Maybe I don't even know the message is there but  know I have missed some time that feels like forever but it's been just five minutes.  My ears ring.  My eyes dart around the room catching everything, even in total darkness.  I feel like I don't quite belong to me.  So I wait.

I rarely leave the girls' room and jump back into life.  I don't get on the phone or watch TV or have a cocktail listening to music.  I stay in the quiet.  I might write or do something resembling meditation for the scribble minded (Scribble-minded being like the characters in Charles Schulz's Peanuts who had a bubble over their heads with scribble in it, usually in response to someone doing something strange or confusing.  I always wondered if they were frustrated or just so overwhelmed with their own thoughts that they had no comment.), but I mostly try to regroup. 

I know that I am suffering the effects of some sort of sensory manipulation.  I know this because I jump at the phone ringing or hush anyone, everyone when I hear the girls crying, even though they are not crying.  I wake up before they call me knowing they are about to call me.  And they are always about to call me.  I wince at the tiny frogs singing songs all night long in the garden because they disturb the silence.  I don't have thoughts of killing them or anyone else for that matter, just dreams of calm, peace, love.

A good friend here said to me that it is not a problem to do all of the mommywifeystuffs.  It is just being acknowledged or getting some love in return for all we try to provide.  After a full 14 hours of kiddie/household time, walking into the silence of a quiet house should be a blessing, a slice of heaven.  But for me, it has been so incredibly lonely.  I miss myself the most in this quiet.  It would probably be different if after a long day, I could retire with Didier at my side and we could watch movies, tell old stories, debate something, anything as we like to do.  But most nights, I see him as I am about to close my eyes, too tired to discuss more than the passing inquiries about our days.  Only something extreme warrants further discussion and even then, we are both often too exhausted for words.  So it waits until the morning when it has lost its impact, poignancy, or really relevance as new issues present themselves as the sun rises.

So I ask myself in the silence, if I know all that I have done in service to my family each day, but no one else does, did it really happen?  If I do it everyday and my only witnesses are 4 years old and 18 months old, does it count?  Is that enough?   Should it be?  It probably should be but I still want someone to tell me, when it is finally quiet, and I brought the quiet, that I did good.  And there is no one.


(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.