Finding the Quiet
Sometimes it is a difficult thing to do
Seated in a little alcove with floor to ceiling windows on my right, I waited for my son to finish his lesson in a new place. We normally met at the teacher’s home, but due to a scheduling problem on his part, we were at an unfamiliar music school where the teacher spent the other half of his life. The waiting room was full of mothers chatting companionably over muted cellos, violins, pianos and the occasional guitar.
The noise caused me to back out of the room and move away. I needed a quiet area and finally found one in a small practice room divided into sections at the opposite end of the building. Making myself comfortable at a work table in one of the sections on a padded folding chair, I was happy to avoid the cacophonous bar down the street I’d tried the week before, and its hard wooden barstools. Mostly I was happy to avoid the other mothers. I coveted quiet more than anything in my world. My husband and children were chatty enough. I needed to be away from the gossip, complaints, and things I generally didn’t care to hear.
I just wanted to read the latest thriller or write my own stories—and be left entirely alone.
As a mother, waiting is something we all learn to do as best we can, finding things to keep boredom at bay while at music lessons, tutor sessions, and sporting events. Yet as the lessons grew and finding places to write became scarce, silence was something I coveted, especially those rare moments when bestowed unexpectedly.
Deep into edits of a work in progress, I jerked when a loud snore broke through the blessed silence. A strangled gasp followed, with the clearing of a throat. Silence. Then the rumble of another snore began softly until it expelled with a volcanic violence. My body shivered at the noise.
Peering around the sectional wall, a grandfatherly type was asleep on a worn loveseat, his stomach rounded under his faded yellow golf shirt, his gray underwear peaking from underneath. I couldn’t blame him. He had his own way of finding the quiet. He rolled to his side and the snoring ceased. I went back to my work.
My reluctance to blend into the mommy pack arose when my oldest was around seven or eight. Attending the local swimming pool had become a chore. I didn’t drink what they told their children was “Mommy’s Special Tea” and I didn’t know who was screwing who in the adjoining neighborhoods, nor did I care. It was too difficult to keep up with the street names and occupants’ bed hopping, boozing it up or in the midst of other things I swear originated from someone’s twisted imagination; the likely culprit Charlene of the awful bleached hair and the uncontrollable mongrels she referred to as her “little angels.”
Invited by a neighbor one morning to a coffee for mothers of elementary and middle-school aged children, it took only twenty minutes before I knew I was in over my head. The topic that morning was the planned graduation presents for several of the high school seniors from our neighborhood, baby-sitters for several of the smaller children.
The gift most popular that year for high school senior girls?
Boob jobs.
They were talking about breast implant surgery as an acceptable graduation present for teenaged girls under the voting age. I almost spit my coffee across the table. The spirited discussion centered around the best upgrade size, particularly since these women believed the girls needed a physical advantage for their first year at the University of Georgia. Physical advantage for what?
They were planning for their daughters’ eventual marriages, not careers. I checked my Blackberry to be certain I hadn’t been sent back several decades in time by mistake.
Grabbing the napkin on my lap, I covered the expression on my face while I politely listened to the conversation swirl around me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and as the visitor to the group, I decided that my comments should remain just that. Mine.
The mothers were serious. This wasn’t a joke. I looked around for the bourbon or the Bailey’s. Their coffee had to be spiked. They were talking about their children and bodily modifications that only grown women with valued friends should think through carefully with bottles of wine in the evenings and months long discussions.
Excusing myself with work demands, I left. There had to be better things to do in life with my precious two hours of uncommitted time than this. Thereafter, I maintained my distance, even in new cities, new schools for the children, new lifestyles. I asked questions only when I trusted someone and avoided the gossip at all costs.
Staying in touch generally with other parents in the new place to safeguard my children given the breast implant trend situation, I learned the value of listening to myself, and not to the silliness of others. But most of all, I learned the value of quiet. For me, it is worth more than any conversation. Particularly about breast implants in teenage girls.
Charleston, Reta?
It's only now I realize I should be eternally thankful. We have reversed roles in our house, so I am non the wiser when it comes to mom groups.