Five Minute Friday~Quiet

We write for five minutes flat. All on the same prompt that are posted at 1 minute past midnight EST every Friday.

No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.

Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

It started because I’d been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.

So now on Fridays a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just write without worrying if it’s just right gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes.

Quiet

It lays upon my home like a somber blanket, muffling sounds of life and joy.  I glare at my aquarium as even the cascade of the filtered water feels loud and out of place in this home.

It is not a quiet of peace.  It not the quietness of a soothed spirit.

It is the silence of the empty nest.

There are not hoots of laughter, no chortles of delight.  There's not any rhythm of life.

It is lonely.  Forgotten. Unnecessary.

I wish I could hug those impatient young moms at the grocers and explain to them - seriously - how quickly the sounds of their life will silence down to this quiet.  The total lack of sound, beyond your own breath.  It's hard to find joy, without the circle of family distracting you with their noise.  The quiet is deafening.

And this totally depressing, discouraging and defeated description is why we start looking for grandchildren!  So once again the quiet of our home is shattered by a child's squeal, the obnoxious happiness of a push popper that makes our teeth itch with irritation.  There's new clutter surround the perfection of our sterile lives.  We love all the textures, smells and toys.   The cuddles and stories, there is abject joy that abounds as we look into the young faces of the future.

The sounds of laughter and play surround so completely that we count the hours until the grand-babies go home and we are once again cocooned within our "quiet."  But now it is a comforting quiet because it's not permanent.  We can rest in this because we know another play date with grandma is coming quickly.

My son, "Little Man" around a year of age...playing with grandma and grandpa