“It’s quiet time,” my father would announce from the driver’s seat of the car.
Sometimes, he’d turn the radio up loudly, Nine Inch Nails blared from the speakers as Annabelle and I held our hands over our ears, exchanging terrified looks.
Other times we would all sit in complete silence, hearing only the muffled noises of our old station wagon. No one dared utter a word. The risk of getting yelled at was even higher if you spoke during quiet time.
It takes great restraint to stay silent as a child, and I assume discipline is what my father thought he was teaching us. Or perhaps he just wanted some peace.
During those moments, my mind would flood with questions about how the world worked. Questions I wished I could ask him. Where does the sun go in the nighttime? Why do the waves go out sometimes and other times come in? Why do people die? Where’s Mother? What’s that? Who’s that? Where are we going? When will we get there?
After some time, my father would turn around and say “It’s over,” and the noise resumed again. But everything felt different. I chose my words more carefully and acted with restraint. The imparted lesson was that quietness was synonymous with goodness. And good was all I ever wanted to be.
As I aged, it became easier to keep quiet. I learned to exist within my own realm, to answer my own questions. Perpetually silenced, my voice was less pronounced. I spoke more softly, behaved more submissively. I did as I was told, and cared more for others than I did myself. I had no idea who I was, so I pretended to be whoever others wanted me to be.
At some point, quiet time stopped being finite.