WHERE DO THE WORDS GO?

On writing and the silence between sentences

I was writing.

I wrote essays — pieces that found an audience, pieces that helped me breathe. Experimenting with satire, I met a clueless narrator of whom I grew quite fond. And I worked on my novel, gaily trotting out to those windmills. Ideas were plump apples in an autumn orchard. I strolled the possibilities and pondered which to pluck.

I wrote on the patio in the sunshine, at my desk between sips of coffee, and in my head everywhere I went. Words spun with the pedals on my bike. They rose with the steam in the shower. As I walked the dogs, words glimmered in the morning sky. At lunchtime, they floated with the sunlit dust motes in my classroom.

Grinning, I thought, I’m on a roll.

The first rule of a streak is never talk about a streak.

I lost a writing weekend to a stomach bug. And another on a road trip with my aging father to visit my college-aged son. I’ll have words for that time sometime, but it’s hard to write about a storm inside the storm.

Then I plodded through weeks of word-picking writing narrative comments for my students. Which words so they get the message? Which words to help them grow? And then there’s Robert, what in the green hell do I say about Robert? Fourteen thousand words, but none for me.

When fall faded to winter, I holed up in the gym. Basketball season — running practice with my writing practice abandoned, drawing up plays while my plot twists sit the bench. Emailing words like, “Making TikToks in the locker room is not an excuse to be late to practice,” but I’m writing nothing really.

Shelved essays. An abandoned third grade protagonist. The novel, again dormant. Fall’s fruits rotted to brown mush.

Where did the words go?

Content creators match moments with music. Music is their secret sauce. Set a dog greeting her long-lost people is to “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri to get the oxytocin flowing. A dopamine burst when that ICE agent eats shit on the Minnesota ice in time with Pitbull’s “Timber.”

It’s not hard. Pick an emotion. Pair a video with the right song. Get clicks.

But life isn’t like that. Lived moments seldom find their musical soulmates. My search for the remote is never accompanied by U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Not once did Whitney belt “I Will Always Love You” when my teen romances ended. But I did get lucky one time in my thirties. I was there to witness a moment and a song unite in communion.

“Relax,” my urologist said like he’d done this a hundred times, like it was a regular Wednesday. “It’ll be over in a minute.” I counted the holes in the ceiling tiles and tried not to flinch. Seventy-eight. Seventy-nine. Eighty. Maybe it was a regular Wednesday for the doctor, but the Wednesday of my vasectomy didn’t feel regular to me.

I took a deep breath and thought about my wife. She’d given birth three times. She’d lent her body to our three children. She’d gone through it. I could endure a bit of poking around down there. Or maybe not.

I shivered. Overzealous air conditioning? The anesthesia? A profound lack of personal fortitude? Eighty-one. Eighty-two. What would happen if I got up and ran away? My teeth chattered. I bit my lip. Eighty…?

And then it happened. The gentle chords of “Let it Be” floated down from the speaker in the ceiling. Three words, three words of peaceful power, three simple syllables changed the experience.

McCartney didn’t write his song for my time of trouble, but I’ll be damned if Mother Mary didn’t whisper those three words of wisdom into my ear. So I let it be — the cold table, the horrid exposure, the prodding, the doctor’s impatience. No hour of darkness; it was over in a minute. Then I went home, sat on an ice pack, and pondered the plausibility of lyrical miracles.

It’s winter break now. I’m woozy and I’m chilled and I’m still not writing. Too many cookies and too many cocktails. Too little sleep. Too much shopping and too many people. Too little time. I’m trying to write but I’m not writing. I drum my fingers on the desk. I scratch the dog’s ears. I wander downstairs for a snack. I pour more coffee. I lean on the counter and look out at the monochromatic world, and I wonder, where do the words go?

Do they fall into a torpor like a skunk in her den, waiting for the spring?

Do they molder in a box like that wrinkled photo of my grandmother?

Do they lean against the wall in the garage like my bike that only comes to life blasting down a gravel road?

Snuggle into the dirt like a ragweed seed slipped from a summer breeze?

Sleep an age entombed in limestone, waiting for the tickle of a paleontologist’s brush?

Where do the words go when I’m not writing?

And me, what about me when I’m not writing? I like myself when I’m writing. When I’m writing, the world likes me back. When I’m writing, the words give me juice. When I’m writing, I’m more — more open, more at ease, more myself. When I’m writing, the words are company for the journey.

They connect me to this human experience. They are life raft and research vessel. River and bridge. In breath and out. Dark matter expanding at the speed of light out into what, where, I don’t know and the rocky firmament beneath my feet.

My wife and I were lucky. We didn’t need help to get pregnant — neither medical nor divine. We decided to have a baby and then she was pregnant.

After number two, we had a debate. Considering clothes, travel, and college, I argued we should stop. No more getting pregnant. When a family of four rides a rollercoaster nobody has to sit with a stranger. With two, we could play man-to-man. So many more tables for four than for five; think of the minutes saved waiting in line.

But my wife wanted a third. Soon, she was pregnant again. Thank the gods. Fatherhood is for me. From little ones riding on my shoulder to big ones crying on it, each phase has been a beautiful surprise. The next perhaps more challenging than the last, but with rewards to match.

My three are pretty much grown now and gradually, they are going away. It’s inevitable and it’s hard. So I’m bound to wonder. I wonder what might have been if my urologist, the Beatles, and I had never met.

One version of the story is that Paul wrote “Let it Be” after a visit from his mother in a dream. She came to him at a difficult time and brought solace. But I know the balm runs both ways. Our children come to us as we come to them. I might have wrapped him up in hugs, but my son’s fleshy hand reaching up to take mine was an equal gift of grace.

This time of year when we hang the stockings I wonder. What if there was another one hung there? Who would they have been? What would they have liked? How would they have changed our family? How would they have changed the world?

And what words would they have spoken? Words spoken in kindness. Words sung and shouted and whispered. Bored words, petulant words, and I love you’s. What echoes would have cascaded into the world?

I wonder, where do unspoken words go?

And yet, I feel them moving inside of me. There’s a finch at the feeder. Her drab feathers flutter as she cracks open sunflower seeds. I could write about her. I could write her out of reality into metaphor and back.

The dog sprints ahead down the trail. My boots crunch through the glazed snow. I stop to listen. In the quiet, I feel them squirming. Tadpoles of the mind. I could write about this lonely day, I could write the grayness into black and white.

My youngest is the last one at home. School doesn’t start for another week. We play Yahtzee after splitting a pizza. The dice clatter across the table. She scoops them up and measures the probabilities. No one is luckier than me. I should write that. I could write that.

So near, so so near. Where are the words?

Over break, I got bad news on the way to dinner. A text stopped me short. My high school class, we’d lost another one. The car was going safe and easy down the street, but I felt like we’d crashed. At the wheel, my wife joked over her shoulder with our daughters. Whiplashed, I scrolled the details.

He and I went to the same Catholic grade school. Same first communion. Same first confession. Same Catholic boy sins. Same penance. Holy Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Both of us were altar boys. We wore the robes, washed the priest’s hands, and rang the bells. Dear Saint Anthony, something has been lost.

I went to public middle school while he stayed holy, but our paths reconverged in high school. There we were, two middle-class white boys who knew the same kids, flirted with the same girls, took the same classes. Decent grades without trying. Good at sports because that mattered.

Good boys from good families. Both off to college. White collared jobs. Kids. Good men with good families. We posted the same things on Facebook.

He looked great online. Professional accolades. Smiling in a photo with a college-aged daughter. Another one — him grinning in a kitchen, arms around the shoulders of high school buddies. They’re holding red cups like college kids. He had his looks, his hair. He’d traveled to places we’d all like to go.

I remember at St. Anthony’s how he could talk. Motor Mouth we’d called him. With gravel in his voice even at an early age, his words were full of wit and confidence. Words that made you stop and listen.

I wonder, where are they now, those words? Gone? Bouncing like pong balls in the minds of those who loved him? Flickering online for who knows how long?

Where did his words go?

Thermodynamics says matter is neither created nor destroyed. Same with energy. Aren’t words just that, energy? Sonic packets of meaning and emotion. Us writ small. Not created and not destroyed. Instantaneous and everlasting, words are nothing and forever vibrating into the entropic universe.

But none of this matters. Rosy-cheeked, my words walk through the backdoor and kick off their boots. My mug clanks against the countertop. A little coffee sloshes out. I leave the mess. I take the stairs two at a time. I race them to my desk.

They’re here. The words are here. Words like crows at sunset, a cloud of croaking words. Words like breeze-blown bubbles: pop, pop, pop. Words like the smell of home. Prodigal words. I don’t care where you’ve been. Thank you for coming back.

They say writing is showing up and doing the work. They say don’t wait for inspiration. They’re not wrong. And they are wrong.

Enough. I’ll take no more questions. I have no time for answers. It’s time to write. The words are here. They’re here!

Michigan-based writer Andrew Lammers explores life backwards by way of personal essays and memoir. A contributor to publications on Medium, he trades in emotional introspection.