Lingering

Tonight I have our 3 younger girls cleaning their room, the boys are each in their own rooms, my husband is researching beetle kill and the current High Park fire in Larimer county, and I want to take a few moments to reflect. Father's Day is today. We took the kids to Manitou Springs yesterday and stayed the night in a simple hotel room. Today we went to old town to have our pictures taken in the old fashioned style of the roaring 20s. After coming home this afternoon and eating with the kids, my husband and myself joined my father in law, mother in law and sister in law at Olive Garden for their dinner. As we left the restaurant, my husband and his family stood in the circle the way they always do before leaving somewhere together, or before saying goodbye, and talked. A family conversation filled with comments, pauses, questions, jokes, more pauses, and many moments of lingering.
This is a family trait of my husband's that has been very difficult for me to adapt to, this lingering. A brief, sometimes uncomfortable silence when no one says anything, but you hear an occasional "mmm" or a sound signifying you are still thinking about what was just said a moment ago. It has been a time of intense discomfort for me, as I am always one who naturally has to have planned in my head what I am going to say next. Lingering takes that planned advancement of conversation away. It settles heavy if you are like me and not used to just being present in a social situation.
I am learning, from my husband's family, to linger and enjoy just the essence of being with loved ones. Words are not what always binds us together, nor is a mind that is actively trying to conjure up worthless things to say to avoid the silence. I have learned to find comfort and acceptance in that silence.
I practice this lingering technique wherever I am now; with another woman who I naturally feel uncomfortable with, while talking on the phone, (which I avoid as much as possible), while listening to my husband talk about his day, or my children sharing an experience. I linger now just being in the presence of others, sensing the atmosphere surrounding us and learning more than I ever could by talking.
Silence is golden. I am now partaking of that gold.