Of course, I can't know about that silence because (a) I'm not on campus and (b) I spend all day with a two and a half-year-old who can not--literally and developmentally can not--stop talking. Gone are the slivers of silence I carved out to preserve my sanity while not missing too much of the constant conversation my son is having with the world as he charts his way through it. Gone is the 25-minute commute to Friends School Haverford each morning when I, too, talked myself through the day before it unfolded. Gone is the nightly dinner conversation about what we each did today because we are all together, every day, fighting over who gets more room on the couch and what book we'll read.
Given all the talking, the noise, the arguing, the news, the sadness, the uncertainty, helping my son to complete his second-grade subtraction worksheet on re-grouping quickly becomes the most insurmountable unfinished project of them all. (Now, more than ever, is not the time for new math.) Like so many folks now, I'm a working parent in a house newly converted into a workspace for two educators with two children under nine, one forever underfoot and the other always underestimating the expansiveness of time ("what do you mean, it hasn't been 30 minutes yet?”) It's hard not to think that we are a living subtraction problem--when life as we once knew it has been taken away, how much sanity and silence is left?
As a parent, teacher, writer, Quaker, and human being, I know that when second-grade subtraction verges on metaphorical significance, it's time for me to log out, shut down the computer, stand on the back porch, and just breathe. And while the silence in the backyard of our city home isn't all that silent, it's always there, reliably waiting to anchor me when I get lost in the sea of daily losses. It's where I'll be tomorrow morning when I would otherwise be at the Meetinghouse with your children, gathering for Meeting for Worship.
Tomorrow morning, at 9:00, I'll be sitting in silence on the stairs of my back porch, and I'm inviting any of you who'd like to join me to do the same (front porches work, too, as do open first-floor windows.) I'll be taking one deep breath after another, taking the time we take every Thursday morning at Friends School Haverford to revive my patience, refill my bucket, restore my spirit. I'll be holding all of you in the Light, as Quakers say, especially those of you who are nurses and doctors, especially those of you whose loved ones are more vulnerable or who are more vulnerable yourselves at this time. Tomorrow, I'll sit with my eyes closed, and I'll hear the voices of your children sing our shared Thursday refrain: may all people and may all children everywhere here this prayer. I don't know the sign language well enough to do it without the help of an FSH second-grader, but I'll give it a try.
Then, around 9:30 or so, I'll head back inside and decide if my family can handle today's second-grade math lesson. If not, we'll be using measuring cups as we make cookies or building forts out of triangular and cylindrical blocks because that's the new math we can all agree upon right now.