speaking of silence

i splash water out of the pool and onto the concrete. the ants scurry as i watch them with my god-like eyes that hover overhead. within seconds i’ve ruined their small lives; destroyed some sort of a lesser kingdom. i decide it’s good that i'm not the real god, the one who is capable of ruining everything, but out of some sort of kindness chooses not to. i know it’s cruel but i’m sort of okay with it, killing the ants and all. “just cooling them off” i think to myself. the ledge is too hot to rest my arms on and that’s why i’m splashing to begin with. water turns to vapor right before my eyes. don’t even need a stove, just give me a pot and this concrete surface. huntsville feels like orlando in the summer; it feels like a slow melting death. that’s why i’m spending as much time as i can in the pool killing ants and cooling off.

i’ve come to huntsville for the week to see my grandpa. haven’t seen his life since my grandma died.

he’s in the house watching an old western and eating peanuts that sit next to the couch in the fancy dish. he says fancy dishes are for using today, not when you’re in the grave. i like that. i probably won’t have fancy dishes when i grow up, just not that kind of a person, but if i did i'd use them on weekdays and also for holding peanuts. yesterday he convinced me to watch curb your enthusiasm in his matter of fact sort of way. he has that power over me; power that melts my stubborn individuality. he has the same tone he’s always had. it’s the one he used when teaching me about globalization and ray charles and how the stock market works.

after i watch the ants die a dismal death i swim to the bottom of the pool and open my eyes. the chlorine is sharp, but no sharper than it was when i was six or seven or eight. i swirl around and let myself feel as free as i can. without oxygen, i let the invisible balloons inside my stomach inflate. when my face feels tomato red and my lungs get tired i surge to the top. i do back flips and handstands and think about how good it feels to be alone. there is no one to talk to and no one to listen to. i can just be. i am just being. most of the time i forgot how to be. sometimes i get nervous about how good it feels to just sit and think and grapple with the pressure of inviting someone into the very alive world that is my head.

on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays my grandpa plays poker at the elks lodge or at the dive bar on the corner i can’t remember the name of. he gets a coke and rum or some other drink i can’t remember the name of either. says he brought the bartender the good olives, not the cheap kind. brought in a little jar so they could use them when he comes in. he even wrote down how to make his favorite drink on a bar napkin, “now, tape this to the olives so you don’t forget.”

things are different here in huntsville; different from when i was little and he taught me what i didn’t know. his sad, sad, tired-from-all-the-crying-eyes share a story of grief. they tell a story of things i can’t explain. his eyes speak of being lonely and knowing heartbreak.

knowing heartbreak.

legitimate, been married for forty years and now i’m a widower heartbreak. he tells me that he misses my grandma and that he wanders through most days unsure of what to do.

“this isn’t the life i imagined, but it’s the one i’m living.”

i think that’s how most of us live, not in the lives we’ve imagined. not like when the world still felt possible. we forget about the essays we wrote in grade school and just sort of let life happen.

we let life happen. and happen. and happen.

all of it feels very human. all of it feels very mediocre.

on the drive back to the airport i know he’s finally ready to talk. there’s a new honesty in his voice, in his rhythm, in his every word. unedited sentences say more than the theories he knows by name. his splintered heart is a clean break from all the time he has spent teaching me about macroeconomics and the vietnam war. it’s a clean break from all the things that never touched on real life. who he is in huntsville is a beautiful departure from everything i’ve ever known about him.

he’s been silent for nearly a year and maybe that’s why things feel so different, so worth listening to.

he’s spent time in spaces filled with silence and now he knows what he feels. maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do, let the silence of our lives reveal the truth that’s in our hearts. maybe when we close our mouths and feel, really truly feel, vulnerability and transformation can begin.

the quiet prepares the way for the telling, the sharing, and the movement towards understanding. that’s the process of carrying out the pain. we have to know what’s real in our hearts, the culprit for what doesn’t feel good. only in the knowing can we scare away the sorrow. we have to be quiet and slow down from all of our saying. we have to ask the heart what hurts and what really matters.

then we talk and what we say is some kind of medicine.