The unspoken things
There are the big things. Life, death, birth, pain, knee replacements, buying a house, a leaky roof, big subjects, the currency of discourse, things we talk about and then there are things we don’t.
These are the things that live in the quiet places, sometimes the hidden places.
The languish unspoken because they are maybe taboo, not worthy of public exposure or maybe because they are so poignantly private, with so deep a meaning that we hold them close, or maybe they are thought to be less important, things that no one would care about but ourselves.
There they are living in the eddies of our innermost thoughts, held hostage by the gates of cultivated discretion we have built or accepted as valid.
There are thoughts that you think no one will understand, that will make you appear boastful or sentimental or just too…you fill in the adjective.
The indescribable, the awful, the powerful love that we have for our children and grandchildren, a vulnerability to the possibility of comparison with other loves. Ours and those of others.
They are the music of a child’s laughter and tears, symphonies of moments that fled by too fast but remain in vivid pictures in places where they hold such bittersweet power
A moment forever imprinted on our souls — a child’s smile in the middle of the night, a joyous moment of childhood innocence as the world unfolds around her.
These are thoughts that are too overwhelming to share, to speak even in private. Unspoken secrets.
Or there are other kinds of secret thoughts.
To live someone else’s life. A sense of envy or is it covetousness for the more or less of that different life? A more slender body, nicer clothes, a bigger house, a smaller house, more things, less things. Less or more engagement in the world. Something we aren’t.
To be angry when anger isn’t allowed. To push it down into the darkest places and hold it back but know that it colors how we perceive the world. To see justice done as we see it should be for a someone who has hurt me or those I love.
Or an injustice you did to someone, something you can’t take back or undo, like the nickel that I found on the floor in my third grade classroom, knowing that it really belonged to Magaret Nally. I wish I could find her and give it back. I’ve wished that for most of my life.
Thoughts that you can’t articulate about boredom, feckless friends, workplace worries….not to share those to bring others down…these are your worries, worries that you can’t articulate that might unleash more than intended. Worries unspoken about adult children, worries that you dare not share, worries that may compromise the detent of age vs. youth that you’ve carefully worked out.
And then there are those mumbles that we share only in private moments
In front of the linen closet wondering how many times you have washed and folded the sheets, what to do with the Princess of Power sheet set or the scented drawer liners that you used to change each year. A satisfaction at something that you’ve accomplished, not recognized but important to you. African violets that have lived more than a month, a well put- together Reuben sandwich, an apple pie, a jar of black raspberry jam for which you’ve picked the berries as well as made the jam.
Or thoughts that you’ve learned through experience to keep quiet. Having an opinion you keep to yourself, an opinion rooted in deep experience, because so many reasons having to do with keeping the peace, not rocking the boat, knowing that that opinion will be ignored or worse yet, patronized.
Holding back experience, ideas, perspective because youth has louder and more critical voices.
And downright evil things like …
Looking at that luscious deep dark chocolate cake, with as lusty a longing as great as Casanova. Or plans to rearrange your diet so that you can just to eat the whole thing. Substitute what you will for the cake.
Or just that time would slow down so that you can capture more memories or to speed up to get out of whatever is holding you back.
Or having a place to go to where only you belong that helps the dark days go away. Or just more thoughts about chocolate cake, which ever.
