I heard frogs in the pond after the house became quiet

Dear Delyara, After my children moved out within the same year, the house became painfully quiet. I had spent twenty-seven years wanting five minutes without someone calling my name. Then I got entire evenings. I began walking after dinner because staying indoors made every empty bedroom louder. One evening, I heard frogs near a pond behind the park. I had passed that pond for years without noticing it. I started returning at the same time each evening. Spring became summer. Tadpoles appeared, reeds grew taller, and I learned which bench stayed dry after rain. Today, my daughter called while I was sitting there and asked what I was doing. I said, “Listening to frogs.” She laughed and said I had become strange. Maybe. The empty nest has not stopped hurting. I still sometimes cook too much food and nearly shout upstairs. But the silence around me is no longer entirely absence. Some nights it contains water, insects, birds, wind, and a ridiculous number of frogs insisting that quiet was never actually quiet.