The television is my company when my husband is deployed.

After my kids are in bed, and my dishes are done, and I’ve answered e-mail and written my husband, the television is background noise. It helps me feel like I’m not really alone in those waning hours of the day.

I can fold laundry with the television’s distraction. I can write my husband yet another letter about the hum of life while he’s gone. And I can do it all while the TV talks and fills the house with light and sound.

It’s not like having another person to talk back to you, but it’s something.

But recently, things are a bit different. I find myself tucking little, pajama'd, freshly bathed heads to bed, Tupperwaring the dinner leftovers, mopping up marinara sauce from the floor, and then, oddly enough, I don’t reach for the remote.

Sometimes, I still fold laundry. Or write e-mails. Or stitch a hole in a teddy bear or paint little wooden figurines for my daughter’s birthday present. I make a cup of tea or get some work done. Take a shower. Shave my legs. Whatever needs to be done, I do.

But now, I do it in silence.

Maybe it’s because I no longer have a baby, my youngest now clearly in toddler mode and screeching and chatting just as much as her big sister.

Maybe it’s because that, after two and half years at this base, we know a lot of people. We are extremely active in the community. Our house can be a revolving door of visitors, meetings, and play dates. And when it’s not, we aren’t here, either, preferring to go and do and meet and play and be out in this place we live. A lot.

Or maybe it’s just because I’ve grown accustomed to the rhythm of being alone in the evenings. I’m not really sure.

All I know is, now, I’ve been enjoying the silence a little more.

A peaceful, quiet house. The sounds of sleep and my feet padding along finishing the day’s work.

It’s the sound of a book that I saved for deployment, which I might be able to read now.

The sound of sleep, coming shortly on the horizon.