Never miss an opportunity to shut up

How true it is. We often miss what’s truly said because we are too busy talking. Or listening. To our music devices, television, computers. Trying to tune out the real world.
We talk so much, others don’t listen anymore.

I love the sound of silence.
My mother (Eartha Kitt) loved the sound of her own thoughts.
And she would write her thoughts down. On whatever paper was available. I must have thousands of pieces of writing. Often times, it’s just rambling, but in some of those pieces I have found pearls.

“When I die”, she would say, “don’t throw anything away. All I have created, is for you to use when I’m gone.”

I would roll my eyes, as children (even those who are adults) tend to do when a parent says something they think ridiculous. But, I listened. I threw nothing out that my mother had birthed. Ephemera, I have learned, is the proper terminology for all those pieces of scrap paper. And, as fate, and my mother, would have it, those very writings, in her own hand, are in fact what I am using as the foundation for the next chapter in my life.

So, I am building, not only upon the foundation of love and strength she instilled in me, I am also taking her penned words to carry on and expand the legacy she left me.

And these words, in their silence, are extremely powerful. As was my mother.

What we remember. What we treasure. What we love. Simply… Eartha.