...notes on the endpapers:silence, please...

 I want to settle into silence.

I want to wrap myself into it, from top to toe, like a cozy blanket. 

I want to burrow into it, as the seasons change.

As these seasons of mine end.

Silence.  I crave it. The unreachable goal.  Intangible prize just out of reach.

There's none to be had.

My days ~ my days and nights and in-betweens ~ are full of sound.

My little one is a never-ending stream-of-consciousness at full-volume.  Always in need of an audience. Always in need of recognition and response and reaffirmation that he is here...taking up space and taking up love and taking up his rightful place.  He needs to constantly test the resonance of his own voice...to hear and feel the reverberation to know he is here...to impart his "hereness" to us all.

He hums...or sings...gestalts...repetitions...that sear themselves into my very skin.  Inescapable.  He chatters...constantly...at varied pitch and volume.  No simple predictable monotone or pattern to study and develop immunity to.  His constant prattle of self-importance dominating every space.

*I've taken up a new practice, of late: reminding myself that I am

happy to hear him

happy he's found his voice

happy he wants to share 'it all' with me, his mami

I say the words aloud...to myself...in the bathroom mirror with the door closed behind me.

Testing them.

Testing myself.

Trying, so hard, to be a good mother.

Sometimes it helps.

But my ears ache.  My head is full. Sometimes I forget how to breathe in the thick soup of ceaseless sound.

My eldest fights to reclaim his foothold...his firstness.

He interjects in all the pauses.  Hums...louder...at his tasks.

The discordance of his humming...or whistling...battling for airspace against his brother's.  The clashing melodies. My poor brain tearing itself in two to make priority of each.

My motherhood can't be muted, it seems.  The on-switch of my attention welded in place by sound.  Constantly scanning.

The chatter of 'independent play' escalating

The clatter of dishes in the sink and sentences spoken just to be heard

The hum of the fridge...

flutter of leaves against the window...

whisper of wind  in through the doorframe...

The ear-splitting screams of my youngest's rage...his dysregulation gaining pitch and volume and substance and solid form.

Even the cat...padding along the floor and scratching at my chair.

It feels like an attack.

Non-stop.

A steady barrage of fire that takes up the whole of my attention...my energy. 

Even the night is loud.  The chitter of wildlife in our wooded lot and the creaking of tree limbs.  The metallic whooshes of plumbing and heating in duet.  The cat, stalking imaginary intruders. My boys....sleep-talking and stirring...the relentless shifting of pillows and blankets and bodies.

Tension. The flinching against each tone. The inescapability...no way out...no pause to push.

Just forever and ever pushing through...pushing past a wall of sound to fulfill the obligations and expectations.

To forestall the frustrations. 

To answer the questions.

To soothe the dysregulations.

To reset the stations.

To offer placations.

To add more sound.

My voice.

Quiet intensity rising with deliberation to cut through the chaos.  To direct attention to lessons or chores or the entertainment of choice.  To acknowledge, with acceptance and understanding and solutions, each big feeling. To softly, gently calm each crisis.  To redirect and redirect and redirect.  To restore order.

My voice.  Tangling in the cross-breezes of everyone else's narrations.

My voice.  Forced into tones and volumes unnatural, to startle them into a momentary speechlessness.

My phone remains on mute.  My headphones on, more often than not.

The sound slightly duller, but still...there...constantly...

Even the light is loud.

Grief has made of me a tuning-fork...vibrating with every note.

Anticipatory grief for what was never realized has me ringing with the resonance of it all.

I wonder, in my desperation, if the final breath will somehow create a silence.

If that silence will become mine.

If the muting of one of the voices that became my inner critic, will cut the sound in half.

I wonder if my silence...my deliberate silence of unspoken pleading and defense, of rage and righteousness, of "why couldn't you just..."  and ...of boundary set...

...the silencing...again...of that little girl...but this time at my own bidding...

...if it will hold.

Or if the dam will burst.

If it will hold through the endpapers...till the book is closed and shelved and gathers dust...

Silence. Please.

Silence for me.

Silence of me.

Just the scrawling...the typing...

But a mouth, muted.
Lest nothing but decades of grief escape its lips.

I want to settle into silence.

Settle.

Settle the score.

Settle myself.

Settle up the tab.

Settle down the lifelong battle.

Settle into silence, like a cozy blanket of comfort, as these seasons come to an end.