FSB 900

During our lives we all have these moments of silence. The silence wants to reach us. This silence is triggering our thoughts to hear something else. At any moment the silence will hit you like a wave crashing down. It's the true meaning of the silence that we find the need, the want to know the silence. Through the memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, by Bret Lott, Lott has many experiences from childhood to adulthood with the secret silence. The silence is a vine in our thoughts, which is intertwined with memories of past and present. The silence makes an appearance in Bret’s life a number of times to give the reader a questionable thought, “Can silence really be heard?” Silence gives a number of meanings to Bret Lott during his life which is expressed through his essays.

The first sign of the rising silence in Bret's mind was when he had a job with doing the paper route through his neighborhood. After the rush of riding down the hill and chugging 16 ounces of RC Cola he would jump into his bed. Bret said, "I lay there in bed listening to that sound, wondering where it had come from, why it was here, what purpose it served; and imagined that perhaps I was the only one on earth who ever heard it.... Sometimes, then, I fell asleep. But most times I only lay awake, waiting for what could happen next, that sound passing through me swallowing me whole, me that much alone in the world" (22). There are times in everyone's life that we have a moment of brilliance and there is only one thing our ears pick up, the silence. The silence wants to be heard. It crawls out into the world around us enlightening, or scaring us because we feel we are the only ones that hear it. While we hear the silence are thoughts are blank because we are trying to find what truly is inside the silence. We don’t want to let the silence disappear. We want to clutch until it reveals why it is hear with us, at this moment. We may feel alone hearing the silence, but it is a shield around us that wants us to remember the moment. The silence is helping us remember those special moments.

Reading the chapter “Hugo”, Bret Lott explains this silence when taping the windows up and putting X's on the windows. "The wind was up, shifting through the pine boughs, whispering and we only listened, no words between us," (121). The silence is always around us. It keeps people alone and together at the same time. Even if there are no words spoken, the same silence can have so many different meanings. It also happens to Bret when the family is living with Deno and Kathy, "...the wind out here-there'd been no wind all day long, simply an overcast sky-charged through the boughs, bent the pines side to side in big, slow arcs, the air through needles whistling furiously, and I wondered why no one else was up, no one else out here, startled from sleep by this sound. There were no clouds, only that moon, and these trees, and that wind," (124). Reading this section made me think of all the times each human being has those silences during hectic or crazy times and we all ask ourselves why I can hear something else in the silence. There is a moment when we are by ourselves and the silence is irritating our minds. It's wrapped around our little finger, that sound in the silence we just can't seem to untie that thought. The silence is maybe a comfort to us, to know everything is going to be alright, or help us to understand our thoughts. Bret seems to be alone whenever he hears the silence. His wife or children might be there during the silence, but they are either weeping, or sleeping. There are no words spoken between them. He is left alone.

We never know what the silence can bring us. Can we really hear silence? Silence is silence. You’re not supposed to hear, but we do in ways that only ourselves can describe it. Through the drive in the rain to “Wadmalaw Island”, Bret finds the silence, "I see up there, in the darkness of those trees, in the black-green of them, a kind of silence it's hard to find anymore: silence like a treasure, a secret worth the drive out here and whatever wrath my children might wreak upon me once they awaken to no orange soda and M&M's" (144). I don't think you have to drive somewhere to find the silence. It comes to you no matter what. If you're by yourself, or with friends there is always a silence lingering through everyone. We can allow ourselves to experience it whenever we would like. I think Lott is correct when he mentions that “silence like a treasure.” The silence is a treasure to each person that experiences it. The treasure grows inside of you. The silence is something we crave, we want to find it and keep it forever. Silence is the gold that keeps us wanting more.

Lott gives the reader his view on the silences that fill his life; to help him remember his past. The silence is the magic mirror that brings the past alive in his thoughts. We all have some form of a magic mirror to help us remember our past. Lott is maybe telling his readers that we need some silence in our lives to remember the past, but also to help deal with the present. The silences are the peace that comes with life that helps us through good and difficult times. It’s the buried treasure at the end of the rainbow.