SILENCE is the one thing I miss having moved from a small town to a big city. Actually our town is only a suburb in the outlying county of a big city.

But still, the hum of cars is constant.

I remember when we first considered moving to Colorado and we looked through the town of Grand Junction perusing possible homes to purchase. We were out at the base of The Monument, a state park that was almost a carbon copy of the Grand Canyon, only on a smaller scale. Beautiful red rock spires and canyons were hard to resist despite the fact that we were told not to buy too close to it because in winter you’d lose daylight and days would be even shorter.

None the less, here we were checking out the area and saw this country home with a “for sale” sign in front and decided to stop and got out of the car and see. I remember my oldest daughter jumping out right behind me and as I’m walking across the street, she says “Listen”.

Well, I did, but I was entranced by its peacefulness, so what does she want me to hear?

I look back at her perplexed.

Quietly I say, “What?”

She says, “Nothing! It is so quiet.”

She was right. Maybe a bird here and there, but overall SILENCE.

Coming from California where there was nothing but constant noise, it was a novelty to us. In Urban areas and big cities its not surprising that noise is something people become accustomed to and are not even aware of. Here? Nothing.

In Alabama, the same thing. Daddy’s farm, our little house in town even.

But even so, there are sounds around us everywhere that we become immune to. It’s like the time we had a tornado blow through Attalla, Alabama one night.  Now Attalla is a quiet little town. Not much noise there, but after the tornado came through, destroyed the house on the corner and blew all the power boxes out, SILENCE.

 

 

We thought our place was quiet. Imagine how surprised we were at how much racket the hum of our appliances made and now there’s not a sound? Who’d a thought?  We actually all loved it.

 

The house had an apartment conversion upstairs where my sister lived, but she’d often come down and we’d eat pizza watch NCIS together. We still got together but instead of TV, we played games by candlelight and went to bed early, but best of all we were all talking to one another.

By headlamp, flashlight and candlelight, we played Scrabble.  It was the best three days ever.