I have come to regard that as her chosen form of self-protection. I remember very little of family stories she told, filling most with so much of her own rancor that my ears refused to listen. I am not at all sure they were meant to hear. It seems, almost, as if she had been somehow testing me, intending my heart to learn to hear the subtle meanings which flow beneath the noise of many words. I find people as easy to read as words.
Language can be as confusing and deceptive as it is intended to be clarifying.
Ten people may interpret the same statement in ten different ways. When I speak, my meaning is often misunderstood. Sometimes my writing is also misunderstood, but putting my words on paper at least allows me more opportunity to consider how others may receive them. I sense another kind of language, universal and unspoken, which most humans have forgotten how to use. It has filled my dreams, since childhood, with remnants of previously unfamiliar lore.