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What I Want Most Is To Be In Quiet and Solitude
But my growing introversion scares me at times
As a child, I knew a life that shook constantly in rooms connected by the long, dark, threatening hallways of a house planted in a thriving agricultural valley, kissed by the sun, and embraced by the rich green hills that protected it.
Fear lived in those hallways and in the rooms they connected.
Brutality and fear in a home with a heavy-handed and alienating father and a mother who tried to forget and who cold-shouldered her kids in the process.
Childhood quiet and solitude
Some five decades ago, as a child, before I understood what I was doing and why, I developed a habit of sitting alone on the stand under the elevated water tank that supplied water to our home.
Built and installed by my father, the water tank stand transported me physically away from the fear I felt and breathed at home and when I thought of home, though away from it.
Back then, climbing the stand took me to my preferred space for quiet and solitude — outside and high above the ground.
In that space, nearer to the open, blue sky, I read, wrote, or sat still and rested in the loving arms of nature.
