The Sounds of Silence

A great summer thunder storm rolled across the prairies this afternoon; the churning skies rumbled off in the distance and grew darker as they approached. It went from clear and sunny and hot and humid to overcast and hot and humid and completely still in a matter of minutes. And that stillness is as ominous today as it was when you were a child and summer lasted forever and when you realized and felt the wind stop and the world grow silent you stopped too, and listened, and watched and you knew you were in the presence of greatness.

The thunder crashed louder and louder as it quickly enveloped us, the greys turning to purples and greens - colours no sky should ever turn - and then the temperature dropped; an icy cold front in the middle of a summer's day; a reminder that you are not in control no matter how much you delude yourself into thinking you are, or should be. Then those huge drops fell. Great, big, massive bucketfulls of water in single drops the size of water balloons. Then faster they came, and then the sound on the roof was not just of an aerial assault of water, but a more solid, sinister sound; the hollow knock of frozen water, hail, marble-sized and smaller, and it looked like it might be snowing - if it wasn't July - though that's never stopped Mother Nature up here before - and you looked out the window in anticipation, with a joyful anxiety, a curious stare from safety, as the pellets bounced and popped and rattled off the gutters, the gazebo and the garden of flowers.

And then, just like that, it was done.

Silence once more.

Then the clouds drifted, parted, and disappeared as the sun returned to brighten the afternoon and bake the rain and hail into the ground, evaporating more than absorbing, and you knew how hot and sticky it must be out there, and you dared not leave your quiet, air-conditioned womb.

School's out for the summer; the streets are quiet in the mornings - no mad rush to get them off to that scholarly jail, no yellow busses on the roads. The backpack returned overflowing with the contents of a grade 7 locker - I'm sure we could return that dictionary if we tried - it hasn't been cracked; and those gym clothes in the green sack? I'm not touching those. The boy can wash them - if they don't walk away on their own beforehand.

Stacks of homework and assignments - some we've seen, and others are news to us - we're becoming more at ease with being shut out bit by bit when it comes to school and friends and teenagerdom - we're still engaged in the boy's life, it's just now he has more ownership of it than before, and we respect that and attempt to foster that respect so it flows both ways. The report card, in all its sanitized informative passages tells us the bare minimum of how he did this past year - though we know in which subjects he excels and which ones he'd rather not have to face. He's got a Math and Science brain, though he's not convinced all Sciences deserve his equal attention yet. He has a wonderful vocabulary and creative mind - he just hasn't found his inner voice or confidence to be able to write it down.

It will come.

He has the same teacher for most of his courses in the fall that the had this past year - the benefit of the Grade 7/8 splits at the local junior high. His English teacher is his Math teacher and French too - as well as a few others - and she knows what he is capable of when he applies himself - a parent's ally she is - and she'll ride him and nurture him as if he were her own, and he will grow to her challenges, and one day he will thank her, though he may not acknowledge her role for years.

He'll find those gifts one day in contemplative silence. And I think he'll smile as he looks back on these days. When summer seems to last forever.

Silence. It can be a warning of dangers ahead, or it can signal a period of refuge, relaxation and rebirth. Like the empty halls of school over the summer, the silence speaks loudest when there's no one there to hear.