Quiet

I never used to like the quite.  It unnerved me. I needed the noise of the television to go to sleep at night.  Now, I crave quiet.  My husband laughs at me sometimes.  He says I'm like my grandpa who used to become anxious when there was too much going on. In my defense, too much includes a six-year-old running through the house making three dogs bark while the tiny people in two different televisions babble on and on just as the telephone rings for the 50th time with some ridiculous sales person trying to tell me I've one a trip to Jamaica. 
Currently, the six-year-old is at school, the three dogs are asleep, and the television is turned off.  The only sound is that of  Molly, our lab/husky/boxer who has one blue eye and one brown eye just like her mother, snoring next to me and the clickety clack of the keyboard as I type.  It's glorious. 
The first snow of the season has fallen and the naked trees sway silently in the arctic breeze that brought with it lower than normal temps.  All of life has slowed down.  Smoke rises slowly from neighboring chimneys, careless in it's ascent.  Occasionally I see the flutter of birds wings as they drop from the warmth of their nests to the feeder I've filled with nuts and seeds.  In the quiet I can hear the earth exhale a slow measured breath of release.  The work of another spring and summer is complete. The harvest of fall is over. Now is the time of retreat and renewal. 
I hope that I too will take this time to slow down and renew.