SILENCE

When Yosh and I met, he lived in Utah and I lived in St Louis. Our first "dates" took place in St Louis, but pretty quick in, the opportunity to go to Utah for a weekend conveniently surfaced. I was obviously all types of nervous preparing for the weekend, over-analyzing every supposed scenario like only a girl in love can do. I was talking with one of my friends about this, and among the list of what I was looking for, was how we would handle silence. I love to chit-chat but heaven knows we all need some silence in our lives. And while I can stand silence, there's not many things that make me more antsy than uncomfortable silence.

So here we are 8ish years later. Obviously Yosh passed the silence test. We did quite well finding a balance between chatting and making out comfortable silence that weekend.

But...we still haven't mastered the timing of silence in our relationship.When I talk to Yosh while he's at work, more than half the time I'm thinking the call got disconnected. There's a guaranteed 20 second break before he responds to a question. And that is IF he responds to the question. The worst is when he calls me and then just sits there. I'm all, "Uhhhh, you know you called me, right? What do you want?" I wish he would talk more.

And then there's when we're laying in bed at night. The lights go off and I'm already giddy anticipating what I'm gonna dream about that night. The lights go off and Yosh.......is ready to talk my ear off. Huh uh. My ears don't operate in the dark. I'm tired. I wish he would talk less.

Please, don't judge our relationships off our phone calls and pillow talk (or lack thereof.) You'd think we were hurtin love birds if you did.

And maybe don't judge our relationship on our weekend dates either.

We were out to a quick dinner this weekend before a party. Now I'll have you know we chatted the whole 40 minutes or so to dinner. We were coming off a long week and both wanted some down time. So at dinner.......we were that couple. Both with phones out, concentrating on nothing other than that rectangular screen, next to oblivious that the other one was present. Truth be told, it only appeared to outsiders we were oblivious. We were very aware of the other's presence. We were playing Scramble. Against each other. On our phones. At the same table. We were both very comfortable- and even enjoying- the silence. Until Yosh started talking distracting to me while I was playing. I was all, "DO NOT TALK TO ME. STOP. SERIOUSLY. LEAVE ME ALONE." Yosh may be able to chat, spell and chew gum all at the same time but I need complete concentration while I get my a double s kicked. SILENCE. That is what I was needin from him. {And maybe a bit of mercy. Can a girl not win every now and then? I got one game....}

By the time we made our way over to the party, I was ready to get my chat on, you know, saying hi to acquaintances we haven't seen in awhile and doing the whole social thing. And that's when the conversation arose. Best one of the night. It was a guy (Paul) I hadn't seen in awhile and really barely knew. We were catching up on another mutual acquaintance (Ty), who is getting married. Now times like these always call for reminiscing, right? So that's exactly what I started doing. I was all, "Remember when Ty lived out here and there was that one girl he was crushing on. You know we would always catch them chatting with each other. Real cute girl. You guys know who I'm talking about, right?" Yosh and Paul were looking at me with blank faces. "You guys don't remember? They worked together and were always talking." Still nothing on the boys' faces. Now I know with every pregnancy and birth, it's been like a jail break for my brain cells and they took full advantage and escaped like maddened convicts, never to be retrieved. And while this mind isn't what it used to be, I still have a knack for hanging onto absolutely unimportant, unnecessary details. I knew I wasn't  crazy and I wasn't going to let this drop without one last shot. "I can't believe you guys don't remember. He'd get all shy, they worked together.........Well, anyway. It was funny. And she was cute. And he liked her." End of conversation talking to myself. 

Paul walked away and that's all I saw/heard from him the rest of the night. Once alone I looked at Yosh and was all, "I can't believe you don't remember her." 

Yosh got a little smile and said, "I do remember her. And so did he..........She's now Paul's wife."

Silence is sometimes golden. And necessary. And annoying. And desperately wanted.

But you don't always get it when you want it!