Shhh....

The quieter things get around here, the more I crave silence.

Vermont is a pretty quiet state, and from our yard I can barely hear the cars going by at the end of the long driveway. I often hear dogs barking in the distance, but no sound of human voices ever reaches my ears. In the house, it's just my husband and me these days, both of us pretty quiet people, and getting quieter by the minute. We differ in one respect, however: he keeps Vermont Public Radio on in whatever room he's in, and in the evenings he turns on the TV. Fortunately for our marriage, the house is well provided with doors.

I remember in high school doing homework with Buddy Holly or Ricky Nelson nasally giving voice on the radio. But that didn't last long. By the time I was in college, I had come to love silence. It helped that I lived at home instead of the dorm. Even as little children, my two daughters were tolerably quiet. They knew the difference between inside voices and outside voices while they were still in diapers. As teenagers, they had radios and other noise makers, but they had to keep the volume low enough so they couldn't be heard outside their bedrooms. Poor kids.

As the years go by, silence--the absence of sounds produced by humans--grows ever more golden for me. There are plenty of other noises around our place, especially in spring: the hens cackling, the chickadees insisting on their territories, the owls hooting, the frogs going on and on about something, sometimes at night the coyotes howling in the woods, sometimes weird animal screams that I can't identify--I don't mind them a bit. I also don't mind the sounds of my dogs--with maybe the exception of sudden explosive barking close to my ear. German Shepherds are quite vocal, and Wolfie especially has a repertory of moans, hums, and yodels that I find charming. He and Bisou lie side by side after breakfast and sing duets, and I'm always sorry when they stop.

Otherwise, though, give me silence, lots of it. I'm attracted by the contemplative monastic orders--nuns and monks who live out their lives in the absence of the spoken word, with only the sound of bells to interrupt the silence of the cloister. All things being relative, however, I wonder if in that kind of quiet the swish of another nun's sandals against the stones or the clacking of somebody's rosary beads become intolerable nuisances. Knowing myself, they very well might.

The Silent Season

Every year, when our descendants depart for their homes after Christmas, the silent season begins. It is silent indoors—the house looking like the siege of Carthage, or rather like Carthage after the siege was over—and silent outdoors—the snow here for the duration and bird song just a memory.

For one who loves contrasts, and I do, this is a good time: the hullabaloo of the solstice followed by the silence of the cloister.

But it would be good if this nice quiet time were to elicit something more than just a sigh of satisfaction. Such as and insight, or a resolution, or a revelation of some kind. Such as an idea of who I really am, or what I am meant to do in this life. I would really like that.

“You are,” I imagine that hitherto-unheard-by-me small, quiet voice enunciating clearly, “a true goatherd. Do not let the latest contretemps dissuade you. So what if your shoulder hurts and your does are dry. Persevere on the goat path!”

Or, “You are a writer. Write single-mindedly. All else is a betrayal of your real nature.”

Or, “Stop thinking in terms of professions, but go and sell all you have and give it to the poor, then get thee to a nunnery.” (The small, quiet voice is familiar with a variety of literary sources.)

It's been quiet here all day (tomorrow I'll tackle the laundry) and I've been taking little naps, and interrogating the voice in between. But there is silence inside me as well as everywhere else.

And then I remembered Trollope's modest advice to writers—“nulla dies sine linea,” no day without a line. And I thought that seemed reasonable enough. And safe. And something I would like to do.

January Feelings

When our kids were little, we used to have heroic Christmases. Grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces would begin arriving at our house in the Maryland countryside the week before the holiday. One year we hosted twelve people, ranging from three months to 83 years old, and nine dogs. (About the dogs: two were ours, one was my mother's, and one, along with her litter of eight puppies, belonged to my father-in-law.)

But after New Year's people would start packing their bags, and eventually my husband would go back to work and the children to school. My faculty position allowed me to choose between teaching a January-term course, or teaching an extra course in the spring. I always chose the latter, so I could be alone in January.

I loved the quiet that would settle around the house once the tree had been taken down and the last reusable bow been put away for next year. Quiet was scarce in my life back then, and I reveled in it. It was a luxury to stay home with the dogs, writing syllabi for the spring semester, uninterrupted except for trips to the goat shed to break the ice in the water bucket.

It was in one such snowy January that I decided to deviate from academic writing, to write stuff that people would actually want to read. My first piece, which I sent to a major glossy magazine, came back with a personalized note rejecting it (I didn't realize at the time what an honor that was). But I couldn't believe they had rejected my article. What in the world was wrong with it? The logic was flawless, the phrasing elegant, the punctuation and spelling correct. Why didn't they want to publish it?

I later realized that it was all wrong, of course. It was academic in tone, full of obscure allusions. The sentences were too long, the words too latinate. Today, although I smile at the earnestness of the piece, I'm proud of the idea behind it: it was a diatribe against the obligation parents feel to expose their children to too many enriching activities—sports, music, arts—so that in the end all that is left is a schedule, and not much of a child.

Yesterday, the daughters whose departure for elementary school used to make for such quiet in my life departed with their loved ones for their respective cities, lives, responsibilities, professions. And once again the January quiet has descended. We stripped the Christmas tree today, my husband and I, and carried it to the edge of the woods to end its days as a shelter for the birds. We draped the cranberry garland over the bird feeder to offer the chickadees some Vitamin C. We recycled the bows and ribbons. We washed the sheets and towels. And now what?

Now comes the silent time, the meditative, the creative time. Now is the time to imagine, to conceive, to bring forth. It is a short time. Even in the frozen North, already the sun lingers longer in the afternoon. The hens notice this, and lay more frequently than they did in November.

“When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen,” Pa said in “Little House in the Prairie.” And it will get colder--but not darker. Before we know it, the world will turn to mud, and we'll hear the chickadees' courting song. And the craziness of spring will be upon us.

So let's not waste January.