Can I get an AMEN? How about a big Cheer? OK, why don't you just talk amongst yourselves (I could use the distraction)?

It is 9:30 and my house is quiet. This is a phenomon (especially since the medicine cabinet wasn’t involved). I have a rare moment when there is nothing on TV and I am not in the mood for anything I’ve Tivoed (like how I just made that a verb and you all know what I’m talking about) when I can just sit and realize that the quiet kind of freaks me out.

I cannot be sure, but I think that I am allergic to quiet (there is probably a pill I could take for that). When it is quiet I feel like there is something that I need to do. Something that I am neglecting so I often go looking for it (maybe I should try to keep my house quiet more often. I might actually loose some weigh from getting up off the couch in my search).

Growing up in a house with 10 strong (and by strong, I mean really loud) personalities, I don’t know that I ever really knew quiet. That unaquantiance (if that is a word) continued on through college when I always had a roommate or two (if you count the horse) and never lived alone. Then I got married and started popping out little noise makers, and have effectively avoided contact with quiet all together. Even when we were in the same vicinity, I think I drove silence away (consciously or not) with the sound of my own voice (talking to others or singing. I have not graduated to talking to myself yet).

I am not afraid of the silence (they say the Spirit dwells there but, having always had noise, I think the Spirit is OK with a little mood music or background noise) but it is kind of sad and empty. I am used to the babbling of babies, the giggles (or wails) of children and, especially in AZ, the swooshing of the AC but there is nothing. I think I prefer the bustle, simply because I soothes me. Maybe I just like to feel like I am not alone (I am never alone but when it is quiet in my world there are usually 4 kids doing something they are not supposed to be doing which means there will soon be an abundance of work for me) and I am comforted when there is sound. I can’t even sleep in the silence. I need a noisy Honeywell fan to create “white noise” (that might just be to block out the whispers of children that refuse to fall asleep until well after the old fogies in my house need to retire).

It is weird, but I have never really thought of the quiet. I have thought about most everything else (because I have a large brain that never seems to turn off) but since I have never known quiet, I have never thought about it. I used to associate it with peace but I have known peace and quiet is not it. But, in this quiet, I have realized that people have their own truths.

Some believe that a clean house equals a happy peaceful house. That is a big steaming load of crap. My truth is that a clean house equals an uptight and grouchy mom and the eternal banishment of potato chips. Some people think that cluttered equals messy but that is also a fly attracting mass. In my world cluttered equals life, progression, and 3 kids in school who bring home heaps of papers and “art” every day. There are also those who think that rising early is a great way to start the day. In my world, you could die if you get to close to me in the morning before I have decided sleep has left me for good. Especially since I have only been able to shut my eyes for 10 minutes because I have 5 nosiy children bound and determined to make their lives harder by keeping me up all night and waking me up right after I have fallen asleep in the morning. These are the truths I have realized in the quiet.

Oh thank goodness. There goes the AC. I am off to watch last week’s The Office.