The Sadness of Silence

Shawshank Redemption has always been one of our favorite movies.   For those of you who don't know the story, Andy and Red, two prison inmates, spend years together behind bars sharing the long empty days together.  Each of them comes to rely on the strength of the other just to get through each day.

And then one day, Andy escapes.   Red says something to the effect that you really don't know how important something or someone is to you until you don't have it anymore and that makes the place where you are all the more dark.

Our house isn't exactly dark, but it sure is quiet.  Jenna, Jon and the kids left this morning.  I got my last 8:00 wake up call with kids jumping on  me as I slept.   I wasn't feeling very well, so I went back to bed after they left.  I layed there waiting for sleep to come back to me and all I could hear was silence. 

I watched Jenna and Jon pack up the car and laughed as Sammy broke into song, singing a Veggie Tale song about not going to Boston in the fall.   I listened to Jon talk to Ben and Sam, not in "little people" language, but in grown up terms just like Tony used to do.   They know what Velcro is and NASA.  Home schooled or not, these children will have a breadth of knowledge that I believe will surpass many of their peers.    I was often amazed with the people I interacted with in the business world who didn't know what I considered to be very basic information.   My sense is that their parents didn't talk to them--they just raised them.  That's unfortunate for both the parents and the children.

I'm watching Tony take down the air mattress in the "boys" room (that used to be my office!) and pack up the chair and other things loaned to us by good neighbors.  The sadness of silence is heavy in the house because yesterday, it was full of laughter. 

I often tease Ben about not getting any older.  I tell him that I want him to go back to being 2 where I could pick him up and cuddle him.  Ben isn't have any of that.  He gleefully tells me that soon he will be 7 and and 8 and then 9 and he will count all the way to 17 or 18.    This morning we had that conversation and I told him that made me sad, because when he was that big, he wouldn't want to come and visit Papa and Mo Mo anymore because he would think we were boring.  "What's boring," he asked in that cute little voice.   "Boring," I said, "means that you won't think we are fun anymore and won't want to come and see us."

"Oh no," Ben said, shaking his head back and forth, "I will never think that....my Papa is always fun."  

And so we go back to our routine--me on the job boards and Tony making the house and yard beautiful.  But every once in a while, we catch ourselves hearing the silence broken by far away sounds of the kids talking and laughing. 

I am so glad we got to see them.