Tuesday, July 05, 2005

July 5, 2005
yelling for convenience

I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat. I do not remember the last time I was sick but given that everyone else in my family has been struck by a rather nasty cold virus in the last week I was not all togather surprised. I don't feel bad overall, I just don't have much of a voice to project at the moment. I start to say something and nothing comes out but a funny croak.

In general, I would not consider myself a yeller. What little yelling I do is not done out of anger or during the heat of conflict it is what I would call convenience yelling. I need the kids to come in for supper so I follow in the footsteps of all the generations before me in the great American tradition of yelling off the back porch for the kids to come eat. Or say I was on one side of the house and I needed something. I might yell for someone to bring it to me.

The interesting thing is that I think I yell a lot more than I realized. I wish I had tallied all the times in the last two days that I went to yell only to find my voice unable to respond. In response to my inability to raise my voice I have had to actually seek out the person I needed. For instance I wanted my middle daughter to change the laundry for me. She was in her room at the time and I normally would have just yelled and she would have went to do it. Instead, I had to walk to her room and pop my head in the door to ask. What I found was a very sweet brother and sister moment occuring. I would have missed it completely had I just yellled for her to come. Now I was standing there able to watch the moment, soak it in, and tell them both how much I loved them and how proud of them I was. No yelling, just lots of eye contact and a few hugs.

I think I am going to work on not yelling for convenience. Instead I am going to seek out the person I need and hopefully experience a few more moments like the one I had this afternoon.