How Quiet Clarifies

In Celebration of Sporadic Silence

How are we supposed to enjoy summer amid wildfire smoke, parasitic produce, stroke-out heat, brazen racism, a lethal government, and neighbors being hunted in the streets?

That’s our question for this week and, honestly, every week.

Tomatoes usually arrive with hornworms, but after not finding any last year, I assumed I was due. This summer found me worn down to a grimy nub. Exhausted in every realm.

On the heels of a busy book launch, I turned 50. I stepped away from social media for nine days. Then almost immediately, eleven more. I craved space and quiet in a visceral way. In the middle of this slow fade from public presence, I was laid off from my kitchen job when the organization unexpectedly (and temporarily, we’re told) closed down.

I wanted quiet, but only on my terms. I longed for space until there was more than I could manage.

My peace became back-filled with tough questions.

• What does an author do after the contracts are all fulfilled and she no longer has an agent and her heart and brain were already emptied on the page?

• What does a community kitchen cook do after she’s forced to turn in her apron?

• What does a mom do after her kids move away and get office jobs and fly to Colombia for eleven days without her?

• What does a woman do with the young parts of her that hide inside a mid-century body that can’t squeeze into last summer’s jeans?

I’m guessing you’ve got your own questions.

In July’s half-time, we wrestle with stuff of life. Loss. Identity. Fortitude. Slow work, as they say.

Deep in the murkiness, I picked 14 pounds of blueberries.

Just me and two buckets (!!!) in the quiet morning sun. Search and pick. Find the fruit. Carry it home. A meditative summertime ritual across fifteen years, staining my hands in these familiar rows. Each summer carried some sort of anvil on my heart. Bending low for the best clusters, I noticed the absence of old weights, lifted by the rusty, trusty mechanics of time and growth.

This might be my quietest summer on record. I haven’t had the capacity for online chatter. I’ve fallen out of the outrage algorithm. I’ve been at a complete loss for words, some days. At times, it has totally freaked me out. What will become of me if I can’t recover my will to harp about injustice and boss the internet around (in love)? Just how many novels can one woman read in radio silence? Questions for the Lord.

No, really.

I’m praying God guides me to acceptance. Like the wise words of Sheryl Crow,

“It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.”

My prayer is a vintage pop song chorus. Lately, the volume is lower:

Slouching around the house. Pulling weeds and watering my garden. Baking muffins, eating two fresh from the oven with a knob of salted butter, then giving the rest to our neighbors so I don’t eat the rest.

Sleeping by the fan, throwing off the covers, feeling around for them in the dark (over and over.) Itching my arms, my chest, my thighs, my neck. Eating ice cream some days and talking myself out of it for most. Pushing sweaty bangs off my sweaty forehead while devouring secondhand paperbacks, yellowed with age and limp with humidity.

Here in the quiet, my life is my prayer.

Here in the confusion, moving forward is my testimony.

I made my way back to social media last week only to be gutted by the death of Nolan Wells in Mississippi. And then the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Some nights, I scroll obsessively, scribbling mental notes. The silence spills through the cracks of this bruising, dazzling world. Even this soft awakening feels right on time.

Quiet clarifies.

It makes room for the new and the necessary. A season within a season. Juicy fruit to mellow the too-muchness.

Things change and stay the same. We’re still here, like split seeds and tender growth. Craning our necks toward the sun. Healing creatively.

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The Rest of the Story

still life: favorite birthday card/basil plant left from Kelly Figs/ vase of garden clippings/tomato candle/pickle Tupperware/flooring sample/blueberry muffin

Weights:

• I’m still so itchy! (Day 2 of prednisone is officially on board. Jesus be a pharmaceutical.)

• The oppressive sense that Americans occupy two distinctly different realities, based on political party

• My last grocery receipt landed like a right hook (oof)

Counterweights:

• Gracie Abrams’ new album dropped today!

• Watching the Home Run Derby with the guys. Cal is a huge Cardinals fan and Jordan Walker is his favorite player. It’s been fun learning more about Walker.

• My nephew, Benny, is a pickle fiend like me and I’m reporting for duty as his chief enabler.

Scents of the Week:

• Nectarines from the farmer’s market

• Hydrocortisone cream

• Fistfuls of basil

Flavors of the Week:

• Zucchini butter pasta

• Blueberries with full-fat, plain Greek yogurt and granola every morning

• Lemon ice cream from Vanilla Bean in Elkhart (epic!)

A Final Word from My Week

“But the best work - the work of transforming the world - comes into being when words that matter and things that matter converge…that doesn’t happen without blanketing silence.” A Beautiful Year by Diana Butler Bass