by Hayley F.
Connecticut which you used to find too silent to be significant, now shows you how a person is reconfigured by quiet, how the sound of your feet begins to fall into step with the cadence of long-unused railroad tracks and how your shoulders start to relax when the roads curve around trees rather than cleaving through them, and how the body here learns to hold still because there is no crowd pressing in, no siren’s insistent shriek demanding forward motion, just the long, gray afternoons where the wind slides dead leaves across empty sidewalks and the cashier at the used bookstore knows exactly what you purchased last winter, and you understand, slowly, that memory doesn’t always need to be loud and sudden, like in the cities; it can be slow and accumulated, like snow on the ancient stone walls.
And then on a stroll through a coastal town in November, salt wind on your face, reading that the brain thrives on comfort, on a constancy of routes and routines, that is why your hand automatically locates the chipped ceramic mug on the shelf and why your eyes scan for the warm light seeping from old windows at dusk; that place does not announce itself to you; it grants you quiet pardons, little permissions you ignored when you were so eager to outgrow your own skin.
Connecticut, where you used to complain there was so little to do, and now you stand by rivers at sunset, watching slivers of ice float like frozen pages on the slow-moving water as college students, bundled in scarves, chatter outside cafes, and you recall being sixteen and so desperately wanting to get away, believing life-true life-was happening somewhere else-in a metropolis, beneath electric lights, among louder, surer people-and now you know that surety is over-rated and that there is something holy in places that do not require you to perform,
And you drive past the white steeples and closed-down diners and bookshops with sagging wooden floors and the hot coffee goes cold in your holder, and leafless trees trace delicate lace across the winter sky, and you understand that the state has no interest in wooing you with pretty views-which is also, probably, why you can count on Connecticut, because the state doesn’t insist on being adored. It just waits for you to develop into someone who is genuinely comforted by a silent, luminous porch lamp in the snow and is happy, for no reason at all, to be there.
Art by Sofia Sepulski, “Spring (2006)”
About the Author
Hayley writes at the intersection of advocacy, medicine, and storytelling, using words to explore human experience, health, and the power of voice in everyday life.