Appreciating the silence...

After my bath, I slipped on my nightgown and walked across the linoleum floors and old tattered carpets of our lake house. I was 6 or maybe 7. My mother sat in an over-stuffed reclining chair and my grandmother sat on the couch, both with a glass of wine. They talked and watched Saturday evening television, laughter filling the room. 

Not finding my grandfather in the living room, I went searching. I pressed my face against the glass of the front door and looked out into the night. I quietly opened the heavy door and pushed the old white screen door into the darkness, hoping to find him there.

The porch, with its AstroTurf flooring, was enclosed with a thin screen all the way around. As one of my feet touched the scratchy green I heard him rustle in the dark, his voice low and calm, "Shh...Missy, come over here beside me." I walked slowly, lightly and felt my way to the huge rocking chair sitting beside his. I crawled up into it and from that height—where my feet could not touch the ground—we would sit. Every once in a while his big, gentle hand covered mine and he'd say, "Do you see the deer? Can you hear     them?", and we would watch and listen in silence as the deer came up almost close enough to touch. 

I remember falling asleep sitting beside him on those hot summer nights and the way he moved in silence as he lifted me all at once into his arms and tucked me safely away in bed.