Quiet Time

I’m a great believer in Mother Nature’s basic agenda. For example, the wisdom to make it difficult for people in their 60’s to start raising a family. A friend whose kids and grandkids have sheltered in place with him and his wife the last four months spent most of his days with a 1 and 4 year old and seemed to be enjoying it. But when the parents and kids traveled across country to the other set of grandparents, he suddenly realized why he was always completely exhausted at the end of the day. Now with his house once again spacious and silent, he was amazed by how much energy he had!

As is obvious from my stories, I’ve spent a good deal of time around the young ones and not only survive it fine, but am uplifted and energized by it. But up to a point. Here I am in the third day of being in charge (along with my wife) of my 5 and 9-year old grandchildren and we’ve mostly had a merry old time. But the thing that crossed my boundaries is not just the constant energy, but the screaming and loud voices. I know there are some scientific explanations of the kind of stress such too-loud sounds make, but you don’t have to be a scientist to know that it’s just TOO MUCH! 

Of course, being a progressive educator, I don’t want to inhibit the free expression of the little darlings, but I also want to survive with my own sanity intact. So today after the ride-in-the-car just went over that sonic edge, I enforced an hour-long Quiet Time back at the house. 

Ah… such blessed silence. Malik played Legos silently, Zadie worked on her sewing and you can tell how much they appreciated the silence as well. I caught up on e-mails, started to write this post, but then…STOP IT, MALIK!!! Just rang out in the other room. I guess Quiet Time is over. 

But we’ll have another one tomorrow.