What you all need: Tidge’s bubbly shine. Soli singing into her hairbrush when she thinks she’s alone. Mouse’s astonishingly pure whistling that enslaves anyone who listens, when he’s happy, when he’s completely absorbed in a task. The talking-dark tonic of the magic house, its endless swish of sea and sky crowding the air.
Not this. An unnatural silence so quiet it hums.
You slam your eyes shut on mornings when the boys would wake Motl and you with their high sunny voices springing into the day and then they’d thunder across to your room and clamber onto your bed and you’d both clamp pillows over your heads but they’d drag them off and burrow into your laughing, protesting warmth. You slam your eyes shut on that rich, rich world. That time with your family was like God breathing life into the spirit-sapped bellows of your days and making everything alive and light. That great incandescence, vanished. For now you stand in a great cavernous stillness and the room waits in response. Just the selfishness of your ambition, your choice, all that’s left.
Silence like mould.
You want oysters. Want to throw back your head and swallow the sea. Want singing that rises heavenward, challenging the ceiling. Want to fling open your night windows with the lights blazing and marvel at so much wanting in: moths and midges, wind and sea and salt. Want to burrow deep into the envelope of your soil and smell the lovely grass. Want to be locked in sunshine. You come from a big sky place and now you have never loved the world so much. All the outrageous beauty of it. Want your Motl, impish and gleeful and full of juice, his touch as he slips into bed long after you’ve fallen into sleep and you stir and he curls around you in a moment of cherishing and chuff. Now now now. Touch is everything and you have left the house of touch. How you imagine Salt Cottage at this moment: taut, holding its breath; no children to bang and clatter life into it; windows firmly shut; no noise, no life.
The silence here is a presence. It waits.
Stay close to any sounds that make you glad you are alive.