Listening

from Fragments

One time, I was following my abuelo in the tomato fields.

We were bending our backs, stooping close to the earth, parting the leaves of the plants, searching for ripe tomatoes.

"Ay, Hilcias, pulling words from you is like picking one of these tomatoes," he laughed. "Hard work!"

We kept a few in our sacks to take home to mamí.

She stewed them with green beans.

We ate in the dusk, after the long day, smiling at each other in peaceful quiet.

"It's okay that you don't talk, Hilcias,” said my abuelo as I rested my head on the straw pillow on the cot beside the open window of our bus.

"If you talked all the time, you'd never learn anything."

He's right, you know.

I learn everything by listening.

As I closed my eyes to go to sleep in the heat of the metal frame of the old bus, I wondered, "But if I only listen, how will I find my voice? 

How do you find your voice?"

Hmmm.

Part of me wants to live my life talking, have my ideas at the center of the universe, with everyone and everything orbiting around them.

Part of me wants to live my life listening, have the ear of my heart at the center of the world, listening to everyone and everything around me. 

Most all of me wants to listen to my abuelo and mamí’s lives as they work the farms and fields on the South Carolina coast.

Maybe that is the greatest thing I've ever learned.

Learning to listen to other people's lives.

Learning to listen to life.

I listen to my abuelo.

I listen to my mamí.

I follow their footsteps.

It is a humble path.