I love the times my family fills my house and I hear the children’s laughter. I love company, for that matter, visiting with friends or family. More often, my house is far too quiet. I don’t need to search out a quiet spot to sit and think because the whole house is just that. As Mom used to say, “The silence is deafening.”
When I was a youngster, we lived on a farm and our water came, not from a faucet, but from a well. In warm weather, when I needed a quiet place to sit and think, I retreated to the well curb, that concrete square around the pump.
Two oaks arched above the well. Mom had tilted an iron kettle against one of the oaks. This provided drinking water for the chickens. (By the way, in my third Darcy/Flora book, you’ll find that iron kettle with water for chickens. In my book, the kettle and chickens belong to an old-timer named Burke Hopkins.)
Mom’s garden grew near the well. Hollyhocks bloomed along the garden fence and bees furnished background music as I sat on the well curb and soaked up the quietness. I thought deep thoughts and dreamed big dreams.
No street noises intruded because there were no streets. No radio or television blared. I heard Mom whistling in her kitchen and occasionally, a hen called to her brood of chicks. I leaned back on the well curb, my arms beneath my head, and gazed up at the blue, blue sky through lacy tree limbs. The future seemed far away, a hazy and inviting mystery. My mind wandered from thought to thought like those white cloud shapes chasing each other across the heavens.
The coolness of the well curbing and the feeling of peace and contentment must have seeped into my bones because, after a good many years, I still go there in memory to find the joy and contentment of those summers long ago.
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