We walk up a mountain, these children and I.

The first child tramples among wet leaves, ice, and rock. The second sleeps inside of me within the soft bowl of my round belly. We hike, holding onto trees and one another for balance. She bounces in her rubber boots toward trail markers, while I purposefully press my boots onto the ground, step by step, up and up. I am two weeks from my due date.  We rest on stones and damp mossy tree trunks.  We talk and stop and look around a lot.

"Let's be trailblazers!" We say as we head into the wildwood to avoid the slickest and steepest of spots.

After an hour, she starts to sag and say that she's tired. "You are strong. Say, 'I am strong!'"

"I am strong." She says, her posture perking up.

"If you say you're tired, you will feel tired. But if you say you're strong, you will feel strong."

My calves are warm. My breath is quick. My cheeks are pink. The sun pours past the bare trees to shine on this quiet land and to shine on her and me. I am so grateful for these bodies.

"You are strong," I tell her. "You are big and strong."

Eventually, between an icy stream and a parking lot, we sit on a blanket, picnicking on blueberries, fig bars, and peanut butter/jelly sandwiches. While we eat silently, the winter sun seeps into me.

I am strong. Say, I am strong. 

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scroll: once a roll of fragile parchment paper for feather pens, now a finger skip upon a small screen...
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It is noise for the eyes and a circus for the mind.  It is a cacophony of psychotic atrocities, of lonely celebrities, and of the climate's warnings: earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, and all other earthly tragedies. Beneath the finger lies the globe's gossip and the country's failings. It is a place for a political ego to find evidence and articulate orators, writers and leaders. It triggers us or leaves us hopeless, ready for rally and revolution. The cell phone is somewhere else entirely, in both the ether and the palm, glowing like some small fluorescent sun. Screens leave me heavy with uncertainty. Therefore, I leave them away from me, silent, for pieces of every day.

Silence.

Screen-less silence.

I listen to the hum of the stove and the hush of my breath.

I let my mind wander and rest in homeostasis.

Yes.

Yet, in this distraction from internal dialogue, space, and boredom, I sometimes stumble upon transformation. It doesn't happen often. Only occasionally do I see a stranger and our similarities and disparities and realize more completely, inequality. Through screens, the brain and being can be educated and enlightened by all sorts of strangers from the human community. Screens can heal, and tie people and cultures together. Just as they can rip us apart with ignorant isms.

So, yes, silence.

I believe in screen-less silence.

I need this emptiness, this time of abandoning and internal seeing.

As we approach another year of political uncertainty, of egos shouting into small screens for all to see, I hope I am wiser than I was in 2016. Just as I hope these screens shine the full spectrum, and not simply the starkness of sides. 

I will seek more screen-less silence and only after, allow myself the power to...

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