Perhaps one of the greatest talents my parents developed in me was the ability to be alone. I can’t think of a time when I truly felt loneliness for another humans company. I have felt sad. I have been despondent. I have been depressed. But I have never felt like another humans presence would reverse those feelings. This is a somewhat strange admission to see in writing. It makes it appear like I am a narcissist or don’t value people. Not true. It is simply a coping mechanism that was required as a child and that matured into a primary feature of my character.
My parents were strict adherents to the law surrounding the “Day Of Rest.” We kept quiet until the church service benediction which occurred sometime after noon. We ate lunch at home and my parents retired to their bedroom for the afternoon. My brother and I were expected to remain quiet and not disturb them until they appeared for the afternoon supper. And then we would don our Sunday clothes again and attend church until 9pm after which we would stop at my grandparents house and I would get to watch grandpaps color television, the only one I knew existed.
Because of this routine, my brother and I learned to invent silent games, value collecting silent objects and learned how to speak in whispers. We also learned how to explain to our friends why we weren’t permitted to leave our property or play with them outside or have them over. I learned to be still and contemplate things.
In grade school I remember the teacher asking each of us in class what their favorite word was. Some said their dogs name, some had to do with fun or sweet food, some were about sports. I confused more than one person when I responded that my favorite word was, “Sshhs!”
One of my favorite quiet games was created with a pair of socks, a small brown paper candy bag, scissors and some tape. I took the bag and cut the bottom out. I taped the bag to the woodwork archway between the dining room and the living room and then I rolled the socks into a ball. With this setup, we could play a silent game of basketball. The sock ball would fit nicely through the bag, could be banked off the ceiling or wall and would make little to no noise.
I also spent hours sorting, cataloging and examining the hundreds of baseball cards we kept in shoeboxes under our beds. Each card had a small cartoon story and statistics for the player. They could be arranged by team, by year, by position or by batting average. Or usually we would make an all star team and keep them in a separate special place.
If we wanted to pay less attention to the volume of our speech we would go outside but the problem with this is we were tempted to make too much noise and disturb our parents. That would inevitably earn you a chore like washing all the woodwork in the house with Murphys Oil Soap or trimming the grass below the chain link fence by hand with shears.
I have to admit that as a child the reason for all this quietness escaped me, sometimes confused me and on more than one occasion made me angry. And later on in my young adult life, I made up for it with loud muscle cars, ear piercing rock n roll amplification and pyrotechnics smuggled into the neighborhood as M80s and Roman candles.
Later in my life when I was bedridden for three months due to an acute illness, I searched for an explanation why such a thing had happened to me at seemingly the worst possible moment of my life. I began reading through the Psalms and frankly had gotten nowhere with it. Nothing was speaking to me. And then I got to the 46th chapter 10th verse. It said, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Well, the one thing I knew how to do was to be still. Now all I had to do is wait.