QUIET
“There’s a silence at the center of everything. Silence has everything in it. It has our death. It has our life, the universes beyond this universe, the galaxies.”
Dear Hadley,
I just got off the phone with you. As I write this, you're 33 days past four and you express all your wild thoughts clearly, with the energy of your whole mighty body. Seeing your animated face on my screen and watching you tell your tales feels like the greatest gift technology could give.
Today you had a school trauma. You explained that everyone in your class was singing a song but you didn’t feel like singing out loud. You said, "I didn't want to sing with them, but they were all looking at me, so I just standed there and cried." You didn't seem upset, just honest, matter of fact.
I thought about how if I were expected to sing a song out loud that I didn’t want to sing, I might cry too. Partially because I'm tone deaf so I'm selective about with whom I share my voice. But also because even though songs can be beautiful, a lot of times they just feel like extra noise. And the older I get, the less I love extra noise.
The world can get so loud.
Sometimes you have to escape.
When in doubt, move towards yourself.
Climb into your quiet corners.
Trust that space.
If you get comfortable with the quiet inside, I think you'll find yourself wandering into rich places, more real than the outside choir of noise and expectation.
This, I think, is what it means to be here.
Completely present, listening to yourself.
Singing or quiet, together or alone, I love you I love you I love you.
Aunt Liz
Had—this pic doesn't have much to do with quiet. But it's the most recent picture of us that I have and it's a good capture of how old you were when you first cried because of the singing. Also: I love your long little leg and your big toe. And I love your parents and your sister and that you still let me scoop you up and hold you.
