Silence

Your silence speaks volumes

It carries weight

She struggled. She worked to overcome her differences. Unrecognized and dismissed as the product of her father, she was shut out.

She considered those years and pondered, as she too has raised her own children. She simply could not comprehend ever sending either child away for any reason.

They had sent her away, repeatedly. Yet here it was decades later when the dry canned message sent through her email read, “subject: Thanksgiving” cryptic, nothing in the body of the message.

Even after all these years her aunt taunted her. Was she seeking a response, attempting a passive trigger?

She was not impacted. She needed to send that message right back! She replied. “I want to inform you that a message was received and if you did not intend me as the recipient you should know it was not received by your intended receiver.”

A dry canned reply came soon. I meant to send it, it read. Nothing else. No warm thoughts, no harsh judgements. She would have been familiar had she battered her with the harsh judgements. This was something “she” had grown to know, not with a sense of comfort, rather in that defensive stance that a wild cat might take.

Opportunity knocked on Thanksgiving Day, she took it. She began to ask questions that burned in her spirit and soul. She knew that there were much the elders had hidden in their years as new citizens to America. In fear of their culture, they assimilated and adopted the American culture. In doing so they buried the lies and the tragedy of their truths. She received no answers. Her queries went unanswered. No reply. Shut out again. Ah, the Aunt had her intended mission complete. No concern to her, she continued with every question and each scenario that she had conjured in her mind for the past four decades.

Her greatest question was why did her Aunt take her from her home during the holidays that year? Why did she build her up to believe that her father would come that Christmas, but he never came? What happened that made her discard her as if she were trash, again? Was it not enough that her father had abandoned her in the first place, she thought?

She reasoned; she had arrived too close to a hypothesis of truth. She reasoned that there was a great deal more to the story of the fire on Lincoln Avenue that delivered a larger newer setting to German men and women for decades. She had believed it to be an honorable place, but her questions only yielded more suspicion. The timelines matched. The fire. The disappearance of her father and his absence late into his elder years where one day a call arrives to tell her that he is alive. Alive and in a nursing home incapable of selfcare and unresponsive to most.

He studied her face. He knew she is his daughter. She was struck. She was frozen without words to speak just as he was and she knew his thoughts and imagined he knew hers, tragic. The tragedy was real and her on this day comes a message from her, the aunt, with bitter passive aggressive intentions. Had she not sustained enough of their distain, their hate over the years? Had she not poised the well? The aunt? Had she not written the false narrative that set forth the tear in the fabric of the relationship between she and her cousin? She and her uncle? Now, on this day she seeks to trigger, push the wild cat with a stick? Look for a reaction? She, the wild tiger, merely yawns. She knows that all will be judged but not by earthy beings and so she speaks her peace. She asks her questions. She lets it rest. She knows that her aunts silence speaks volumes and carries great weight. She asked all the right questions and has her answers. She is thankful.

She is thankful and retreats to her own visualizations of a bright new future. A home that she builds piece by piece in her imagination. Manifesting messages carried though a universe of a large backyard with fertile soil and shade trees. She rests her mind in this place to further explore its landscape. Silence carries great weight.