Understanding His Silence

For the first time in my journey as a mother, I have a fully verbal child though the term verbal doesn't quite capture the experience.  My oldest daughter is exuberant, she is loud, she is constantly conversing with anyone anywhere.  I told her once to sit still and she said, "Okay, but I can't stop talking."  And while hearing about her thoughts and feelings, the daily occurrences and the minutiae of her six-year-old life has been a blessing, the most unexpected and amazing effect of parenting a verbal child is that it has brought me infinitely closer to my nearly nonverbal one.  The incessant chatter of my daughter has shown me the beauty in the relative silence of my son.

When Rex communicates, it's boiled down to the essentials, the bare minimum of what he feels important enough to share with or ask of the world.  There's nothing superfluous, nothing indulgent, nothing exaggerated.  He's straight-forward and concrete.  I don't have to read between the lines or worry about hidden agendas.  When Rex communicates, it's from the depth of his being.  It takes true effort and motivation for him to produce a holophrase or sign a single word.

I enjoy and appreciate chatting, discussing, explaining and joking with both of my daughters, but until our loquacious eldest joined our family, I wasn't fully aware of the immense gratitude and peace I feel in the times that I sit with my son in near-silence when a single touch, a broad smile, a long look in the eye, or a spontaneous giggle take the place of a thousand words.  Connecting with someone who is nonverbal forces you to dig to your core in search of your humanity beyond and beneath linguistic behavior to create a unique system of communication in which the community of "speakers" (or more accurately communicators) may  never consist of more than two members.  The intimacy forged by such a system is intense and rewarding.  And its worth has been magnified to me since I began parenting a gabby girl.

Rex may never be able to speak the words I love you, but he undoubtedly loves and is loved.  Over the course of years, he and I have created our own way to express our love for one another. I use it nearly every day and, in the most miraculous moments of our relationship, my almost nonverbal child has been able to convey his love for me spontaneously in the same way.  There's not a word, not a sound in those moments, only a pure connection between a mother and her son.

He who does not understand your silence

will probably not understand your words.

Elbert Hubbard