Touching Silence

I once heard on Oprah that you should make time every day for silence.

I love to be still. My favorite time of day might be the fifteen glorious minutes in the parent pick-up lane when I’m not at work but not yet back at motherhood, and I can simply process the day. I like to think about things instead of just letting them happen. I like to think about who I want to be and whether or not I am getting there.

I spend a lot of my day online, and I don’t let the chaos of twitter and facebook and blogs and Pinterest get to me. (I adore Pinterest with its snapshots of beautiful things…) But I do begin to crave the tangible. Do you know I still love the feel of the steering wheel in my hands? The freedom and rejoicing I used to feel at sixteen when I finally had the license to drive myself anywhere I needed to go, has really never faded. Even when my sister got her license eighteen months before, I remember thinking, “The Nickerson girls…with power.” And I can still conjure that small, tangible thrill when I grip a steering wheel today.

I still find grocery shopping almost delightful as long as I use the sturdy cloth bags instead of flimsy plastic. They hang in my kitchen – not yet on cute pegs on the wall, but someday. I hate the transience of grocery shopping – the inescapable realization that everything you buy will be consumed or wasted in 7-14 days and you’ll be right back there buying the same things again. Reusable bags add some permanence to the experience.

I like to make a bed or straighten a picture frame or dust a clear, smooth surface. I still run my hand along the newness of our table and smile. Pulling up the comforters on my children’s beds is ridiculously satisfying for me. A way to be grateful for the bed, the home, and the child all at once.

Isn’t it strange that you can sit in a quiet room, but if you’re surfing the web, it’s very loud? And yet I can feel more alone and dissatisfied in that noise than I do in the quiet touching of the little things that make up the life around me. Those of us who believe in the eternal aren’t supposed to set our hearts so much on things. I hear it often – it’s on a song on my radio almost every morning, “I was not made for here.” And I always think: I was. I was made for here. I know it every time I enjoy one of these fleeting silent moments. Every time I touch my life and wake up to it again.