I've always liked the quiet. I was the kid who preferred reading my endless pile of books and magazines to crowded parties. I spent afternoons running amidst the woods with only the call of birds and whoosh of the wind as my soundtrack. At shows, I was more likely to shoegaze than scream and sing. In short, I'm just not one to be loud.
This all apparently changed with parenthood, when a child's shrieking, screaming, growling, laughter, and crying became part of my house's background noise. Even the quietest of children go through toddlerhood, when screaming at the top of one's lungs is rigueur. After about a month of nonstop shrieking, the likes of which have probably alerted the local police department, I grew used to my son's noise. What I formerly found peaceful -- stillness, quiet -- I now find worrisome. Silence signals that my little one is in danger, or at least into something he shouldn't be.
What I fail to understand is how rudely many parents react to the behavior of other people's children. Recently, at a local shopping mall that boasts a small playground, I saw a fellow parent work to wrangle her son during an all-out tantrum. It was a mess -- screaming, kicking, wailing, biting, all in a very public place. While I worked to avert my eyes and go on watching my own munchkin scale a scary, five-foot-high series of steps, the twenty or so other parents on the playground craned their necks to watch another mother work to drag her screaming two-year-old over to a bench. It was playground rubbernecking, only there was not a scratch of empathy or concern on anyone's face. Instead, the attitude was one of contempt -- for this mother, her "bratty" kid, the fact that their Sunday afternoon was interrupted with guttural screams of "no, don't" and "I don't want to." Their eyes and expressions said it all: they disapproved.
What's perhaps most unbelievable about this scenario is the fact that everyone giving this poor mom the stink-eye has been in this situation themselves. Everyone's kid screams, yells, throws down, and acts in a manner most uncouth at one point in time or another. Usually, this happens in public. Always, one's self-control and personal stamina are tested to the nth degree. It's so common, I question how any parent even bats an eye at the sound of a child mid-tantrum. But there we were, listening, watching, judging.
I shuddered at the thought of when my time will come, when I will be the subject of other mothers' tsks and head shakes. I hope that when it happens to me, I can block the angry stares and just carry on. Sure my face will be red, and my stomach will be in knots, but I hope I have the will courage to understand that stillness and quiet are for another time in life, and that noise and laughter and difficulty and even shrieking are part of my life now. Scream on.
