A Hush

I love these foggy mornings. It’s like waking up to discover that it snowed in the night., and everything is hushed and forgiven. The hills are fading into white, nearly invisible at the top. We are floating in a cloud.

When I went outside, I saw a little fox. We watched each other for a moment or two, then he strolled away with an air of nonchalance. Everything seemed secretive and in slow motion, mysterious, but with a wink.

“Stillness. One of the doors into the temple…” said Mary Oliver. And since the door was open wide, I entered.

The ocean was like molten silver streaked with dark patches of kelp, and there was a distinctive border of midnight blue at the horizon. I wished that I could make a painting of it, then realized that this canvas was sufficient, and I stood and simply looked, suspended in holy quietude.

The world can be a noisy place, and I know I talk too much. I blab about my feelings, I spout nonsense, I over-share. Years ago, my daughter wrote in her diary that she had peeked into my diary (an entry I discovered while peeking into hers) and she’d thereby discovered I had no secrets. “With my mom,” she wrote, “what you see is what you get. There wasn’t anything in her journal that she wouldn’t have told me or that I didn’t already know.”

It’s either a cool testimonial to my honesty or an indictment of my boring-ness.

But the truth is, I do have an inner life, and some of it is nonverbal. It’s just that I often neglect it. In my tedious striving for connection and expression, I forget that other realm.

And then, there comes the hush of a foggy morning, a blank page on the calendar, a feather-quiet invitation to an almost-forgotten place.