Quiet. After three months of the exact opposite, I thought I’d feel relief this week. Instead, I’ve felt lost.
No more hum of the show barn. No more music blaring while the sheep bleat loudly and the pigs knock at their feeders. No more Hunter pounding up the stairs before 6 a.m. on his way out to chore. No more arguing between kids. No more shouts of “Mom, do you have a minute?” No more frustrated tears about sheep that won’t set up, or goats that won’t walk, or pigs that shed their hair. No more loud fans battling the hot summer days for our show stock.
The barn is empty. Olivia and Hunter are off to college, Harper’s back to school, and I’m back to working solo again.
The Heavy Weight of Stillness
In the stillness, I’ve realized that quiet is never actually empty. There is a biological reason why this silence feels so heavy.
When the external world suddenly goes silent, we expect to feel a sense of peace. Instead, many of us experience discomfort, restlessness and anxiety. When the noise of our daily routine is stripped away, the silence simply amplifies reality.
As parents, we don’t spend much time daydreaming or ruminating; we are too busy juggling families and careers, leaving little space for deep reflection. But when we don’t have “noise” to anchor our attention outward, a network in our brain called the Default Mode Network takes over, forcing us to process the quiet, unfinished business of our emotions.
The Soundtrack of Summer
For me, the noise of the show barn in summer instantly takes me back to my childhood and my favorite memories from the county fair. It’s like hope, anticipation and joy all wrapped up together. Perhaps it’s the rhythm of the fans, the steady beat of the radio, or simply the powerful association between sound and memory.
Science tells us that the relationship between sound and memory is one of the most deeply rooted connection points in the human brain. Sound acts as a bridge to the past, a tool to preserve our history, and a vehicle to lock in our experiences.
Neuroscientists at the University of California, Davis actually mapped this relationship. They discovered that the brain region responsible for tracking musical structure and tonality sits right next to the hub that stores our personal, autobiographical memories. To put it simply, sound doesn’t just pass through our ears; it acts as a foundational framework our brains use to organize, preserve and unlock our life experiences. That’s why the sudden absence of it is so disorienting.
Without those sounds to anchor me, my mind is left to wander through the quiet spaces of this house, trying to map out a new version of normal.
Finding the Next Volume
You would think after being a parent for over 20 years, I’d have this figured out a little better. I guess moving from three kids to two kids, and now to just one kid at home, impacts the “noise” of my day more than I expected.
When Olivia left for college two years ago, we had no idea what was about to happen. I think what surprised me most in that transition was how hard it was on her siblings. The house suddenly got a lot quieter for them, too.
As we send Hunter off to college this fall, the three of us left behind know what’s coming. I wish I had some great advice about how to survive the quiet, but I don’t. I only know that with time, we will adjust to this new volume. If you are facing the same silence in your own home, I know you will, too.
For now, I’m heading out to the barn to crank up some AC/DC and hold onto those summer memories just a little longer.
