The Quiet

It didn’t take long for me to find my place. 

On a slight rise above the cabanon that we had rented, a creaky deck chair was waiting for me, slung low across a wooden platform and encircled by a shin high stone wall. 

From my post, I could look out over the lavender fields. Flowerless, yes but lined with organized stripes that calmed my mind with the efficiency of a Japanese garden. In the mornings, I could do my yoga then sit in meditation afterwards, imprinting such a view through barely open eyes.

I had instinctively turned away from the swing of the hammocks, not wanting to be enveloped in a cocoon but preferring to be exposed. So grateful to be in the open air, under the sun until it threatened to burn, letting the breezes turn my novel’s pages for me and string the wisps of my hair into the corners of my eyes, my mouth.

I wore the quiet lightly on my shoulders at first. As the days passed, it began to sink below my skin until it became something of an embrace. 

A grownup gray grasshopper stretched out his violin legs and I could hear their scratch.

The clouds rattled with the youthful brio of kids pulling strings of tin cans in a race across the sky while the earth below my seat would shift with a sigh of oh so old. 

It was the opposite of silence, this implosion of life. From my place, where I was supposed to be, I took it all in and now keep the quiet in a jewel box just below my heart.