The Sound of Silence

Cate walked around with a bandaid covering her mouth for about an hour this morning. She stuck it on horizontally, the way I vaguely remember teachers covering the mouths of talkative students with strips of masking tape. (Could this really have been allowable in my lifetime?)

There was the ever communicative Cate, silent.

Cate is either a copycat, or the most sympathetic soul that has ever lived. Every pain felt by her brother, she feels immediately and with the same intensity. Alex has been sick all week, his nose so congested he gasps for air. Cate too, although there is no physical evidence to support her claims. I ask him to try breathing in steam. She needs to do it too. He falls and scrapes his knee, she needs a bandaid too. And we are lucky. There is very little a bandaid cannot cure in our house. And we have many, many things that need curing - week old scratches, invisible splinters, scars from last year, countless scraped knees and bumps on heads. Bandaids can cure all of these things.

And they can quiet a chatty girl.

Yesterday, Cate and I made a Target run. From where we live, it takes one hour to get to Target... uphill, in the snow and all that... We left at 9:30 a.m. We returned at 2:30 p.m. I am completely certain that Cate was silent for no more then two seconds at any point in our journey. She talked all the way to the store. She talked all the way through the store. She talked all the way home. She attracted an audience of senior citizens. They would find us from aisles away, her voice, like a magic flute leading them past towels and pet food to plastic cups or oral care or wherever we might be. And Cate held audience while they "oohed" and "ahhed" and asked her question after question she was only too happy to answer. Always, I am given some kind parting advice, "Watch out for her when she's older. She'll be a beauty," the men say. "I've got a granddaughter just her age, she'll keep you on your toes," the women say.

And on and on Cate talks, happy to shout a cheery, "Hello!" to anyone who might look her way.

I am fairly quiet by nature, a trait that forces Cate to ask several hundred times a day, "Why you no talking, Mommy? You sick?"

Sickness, I guess, is the only plausible reason for silence in Cate's mind. Maybe the bandaid to the mouth was another show of sympathy for her brother. I can see her logic... "If he is sick, I must be too. People don't talk when they are sick."

And for Cate, there was only one way to fall silent - a bandaid to the mouth.

She was determined to keep the thing in place. I showered, got dressed and put on my makeup in silence this morning. She caved only when she saw me bring out the lip gloss - something she begs for every day. She faltered for a moment. Even a three year old knows band aids can't stick to glossy lips. She turned her back and then whirled around, ripping off the bandaid and sticking her lips out in a pout. Fanciness before silence. I shined up her quiet rosebud mouth. She thanked me and then pointed to my crazy, frizzy, untouched hair and said, "Mommy. You hair not good."

And then she whizzed out of the bathroom and went downstairs to check on her brother.