Quiet?

It's unusually quiet around here.  The very air is thick with silence, and it feels strange.  Normally, afternoons are a wild hodge-podge of boyish horseplay, mother-reminders of chores, questions about available edibles, pencil-finding homeworkers, doors opening with coming-home traffic and closing again with out-goers.  It's a veritable Grand Central Station, and although I become harried by the relentless motion, there is nowhere I'd rather be than in the midst of my children's lives.

For now, I wonder at, and revel in the stillness.  Trent is quiet in his office.  Alec is at his after-school job.  Ben is at Latin Club (I think).  Cub Scouts claims Chris, David, and Eddy, as den chief, Webelos, and Bear respectively.  The Angel and the babies are taking a late nap after our mid-day outing to the bi-monthly Aunts of the Knapp Family Luncheon.  So still.  Whatever shall I do with myself?  For a moment I am a lost empty nester.  Then I slip into a deliciously stolen nap.  Bliss!

Now the phone rings, then the sliding door moves aside to allow entrance.  The hush is broken by the den chief coming home from a busy meeting of making bird posters.  The Scrub Sprouts start straggling in, treasuring a bit of obsidian and a homemade catapult.  I hear Trent making calls behind the office door.  A sleeping baby rolls drowsily off the couch.  The timer beeps on the baking bread.  I wonder what I can whip up for dinner, and the world resumes its usual pace.  I head into the kitchen with a smile on my face, functional again because

I snuck a nap today.