feeling quiet....

so i'll just share a layout i've been holding onto. the photo was from my wedding, august 1995. journaling written february 2009.



journaling:
Mom taught me, for real, that silence is golden. She was a woman of very few words----almost to the point of seeming standoffish if you really didn't know this about her. But, she had the best intentions and a heart of gold---and so much to say. Much of her conversation was in her body language or the look on her face.

You know, my drivers education teacher once told me that I should be in show business because I had the best expressions on my face all the time. I laughed. But, you know, it's true. So did Mom. There's a lyric in a love song by Alison Krauss that goes something like this "try as I may, I could never explain, what I hear when you don't say a thing...". Then, the chorus goes on to say, "you say it best, when you say nothing at all." I couldn't have explained it better. That was SO Mom. I learned from her that words cannot always express what the heart feels but the look in her eyes said it all to me.

I learned to read her looks like a book. I'll never forget the look on her face when she came and told me she was divorcing Dad. It was the look of confusion and one that said she wasn't quite sure what was around the next corner. Or there was the look she had when she adjusted my wedding veil. One that swelled with tears, trying to be brave in her sadness. She had the look that said she was choking back the sadness of having to loosen her grip on her only daughter, but it also said she wasn't quite ready to let her baby go. The words never formed and rolled off her lips, but I knew. Then there was the look, and the single word she uttered, when I announced to her that I was expecting her first grandbaby. And another look when that same grandbaby was just minutes from being born. I remember them all. There were many more looks with very few words, but somehow I always knew exactly what she was trying to say.

*featured layout 9-15-09, www.twopeasinabucket.com :o)