The Disadvantages of Silence
By Saltwater Romance

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Dedicated: To those who have a rocky family history and can relate to this.

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According to my Aunt Mikan and Uncle Natsume, my mum was impervious. She was mechanical in her actions, and never once made a mistake in calculating life. She possessed an almost godly-like perfection about her. Yet somehow, she let that faucet of her personality die within her as the years went on.

To me, she was a normal mum, whose life was hardened and molded by the course of time.

I could remember the nights where she would allay my nightmares by staying up with me telling me stories in French, singing silly made-up songs that would spring at the whim of her tongue, or watching Disney movies with a cup of hot cocoa. I reminisced the snowy afternoons where she would bake me a batch of her special chocolate chip cookies, which seemed to warm me up inside out after playing in the snow. During the summer, she would sync her vacation days with my dad's and take me out on picnics.

Those days went and gone away, vanishing into afternoons of finding my mum in tears, although she stubbornly blamed it on the chemical imbalance from the accidents in her laboratory downstairs. Yes, sometimes even she made mistakes and openly admitted to them. Or maybe she was hiding her emotions under the thick facade of being busy making dinner or dusting the already spotless mantel. No matter, I could still see her bloodshot eyes before I drift off to sleep, thinking 'This is mum. She used to be so invincible, what happened?'

Her tears imminently progressed into being virulent pointless arguments with Dad.

Speaking of which, my mum wasn't the only one who had been a complete different character when she was younger. My dad was described to have a quiet ebullience to him back then. Aunt Mikan swore to me that his azure eyes would be able to put the New York City lights to shame. Uncle Natsume chuckled when he informed me affectionately that when my dad was a teenager, he had two passions in his life: wooing my mum who had no interest in him and nursing injured animals.

You know where his two passions led him? Storming out of the house with his hand permanently clenched into his hair and a 'what went wrong?' look etched on his bewildered face. Hours later of my mum's neurotic cleaning and busying herself around the house, he finally allowed to reveal his presence back home reeking of alcohol. He wasn't a raucous drunk, rather he transformed into a solemn character; more so than usual.

Automatically, I would be shooed off into my bedroom by my mum who deemed me too young to view the state of my dad. For the rest of the night, the house would be dead quiet with only the resonance of my I-pod on shuffle.

Unspoken words and shed tears became frequent visitors of my household.

The spirits of both of my parents were breaking, and there was nothing that I could do in order to mollify it.

There's a common saying of 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' However, words can hurt like anything. But silence is what breaks the heart.

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When I scanned the audience, I came to see the unmistakable pride in a pair of crimson eyes, and Aunt Mikan who was cheering alongside the ephemeral thunderous applause. I smiled briefly in self-satisfaction of being able to get through my piece without stumbling or cracking my voice in being too emotionally affected.

Until, I saw a couple standing the back of the room from the corner of my eyes. I paled immediately; there was a reason why I didn't want to invite my parents to the poetry jam between my high school and the rivaling one from across town. My mum cleared her throat and called out to my aging English teacher, who used to teach my parents, "Narumi. May I?"

When he nodded, she strode up to the podium with every pair of eyes in the auditorium hypnotically staring her every fluid move. She declared in a laconic response to what I had wrote and shared, "True love is not when two people look straight at each other, but when they both are facing the same direction."

A lot of people looked puzzled, but I stared at my feet. She went on to clarify, "You might not be able to look eye to eye on a lot of issues. You might argue and fight a lot. You might even want to give up and walk away. But at the end of the day, you both are meant to be with each other. And maybe someday, you can appreciate each other and remember the reasons that kept a 25 year marriage together for as long as it did."

Even from behind my mum's figure, I knew that she was staring at my dad pointedly. She whispered brokenly, "I miss you, Ruka."

Everyone around the world probably heard the silence between my parents starting to falter. Maybe it wouldn't be today or tomorrow, but some day in the future, the silence will be broken completely with their hearts mended. I was smiling broadly when I spent an entire car ride with my parents holding hands over the gearshift and making goo-goo eyes during red lights.

Fin.

Author's Sidenote: I wish my parents could be reunited like this! I know that my grammar was all over the place, Hotaru was out of character, and the speaker was an OC, but this story helped me a lot in taking care of my emotional health within the two hours of constructing it.

Review, s'il vous plait!