The World Briefly Muted

The city wakes slowly. I can tell from the quality of the light it's not yet six. My alarm is set for 7 since Partner in Grime is traveling for work. When he's home, I'm up much earlier.

A sound from the neighbor across the driveway; the elderly resident taking out his recycling, He wakes early, his wife in a nursing home, and finding himself in a large house on his own. His step is very slow and measured as if he is carrying something fragile and precious, perhaps some glass, or simply his dreams for this day. When it is warmer out, he will get out his wheelbarrow and supplies to tend to his garden, often having to lay on the ground, to tend to the flowers while prone, his knees not supporting him to do so otherwise. It can't be comfortable but he finds joy in it, nurturing the inexhaustible joy that lives in beauty.

In the distance, the bark of a dog as it hears the neighborhood awaken. That's Winston the Goldendoodle, who lives behind us, out as his "Dad" feeds the chickens, and readies the house for the day. That's something I had to get used to, the sound of chickens in the middle of a city of millions. No rooster, but you hear the contented clucks when outside. The sound of traffic is light. A freight train rumbles down at the other end of the block, the mounful sound of the whistle as it nears the crossing carried on the windless chill that is memory's heat.

I don't have to open the curtains to see it. Despite warm days, it's been down near freezing at night and I've woken to frost on the ground recently.  Another neighbor will have their woodstove lit for warmth, the smoke from the chimney wrapping itself like shimmering ribbon in the boughs of the budding trees, a pale silvered gray of silk or sword blade. Once it's fully light, dogs will be out being walked, everyone on the block aware of the unwritten schedule of who walks when and in what direction, to avoid the great canine commotion of barking that will ensure if two dogs meet in opposite directions, or heaven forbid, someone encounters the "great mongrel horde" which is 5 dogs of tiny size and enormous ego that are walked by one teen every morning. If you think you will sleep in through that, you are mistaken.

But for now, it's quiet, and I'm tempted to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. The rustle of cotton, the panting whisper of breath, the predation of the night assuming a hundred avatars of dreams. No bread to bake, no housework to do, simply the house still and quiet as if marooned in space by the dwindling of time. The neighbors back inside, the sounds outside fall to a low fragmentary pitch. In the distance, from the metropark, a coyote’s howl at the indignation of clouds that covered the waning moon; no other sound made. Prey gone into hiding, insects dormant from the cold; everything else assuming their own mantle of hiding or hunt.

I love this time of day. Though it's been years since I've had to hunt to put food on the table I still recall those early mornings during whitetail season. I remember the eastern sky turning to primrose, then red with the firing of that first weapon; two of us walking in, whispers no louder than the silent dawn itself. The darkness seemed alive, God’s breath biting at the back of my neck, raising goosebumps under the weight of my clothing. The blood surged, ran hotter, Pentecostal flames licking up my legs as we chased the sound of our blood into the tree line.

That night we donned stiff jeans and shirts softened by the hands of a hundred washes, and we prepared a drink, an amber hallelujah pouring from a shot glass while out on the railing the coveralls hung waiting for another season of need. It's been years since I've had a sip of whisky, and I don't know what happened to those well-worn coveralls, but I'm sure somewhere they still smell faintly of woodsmoke.

My own house this morning is quiet. There's a click click from the ductwork as the heat comes on. Sunny stirs in her crate, not ready to awaken either. In other houses, the TV would be on already, sound, even if senseless, filling up the quiet spaces. I've known people like that, they can't bear the quiet, and from the moment they get up until they try and go to sleep at night, sound is in the air; news, tic tok videos, internet memes, anything to fill up the silence that might actually make them stop and think "why is this all so important that it takes up my whole day?" 

We get some strange looks when people realize we don't own a TV. There's a little TV in the basement with an antenna on the roof where we can get the weather if we're hunkered down during a tornado warning and the phone connectivity to the internet is lost. There's lots of CDs of favorite old shows and movies, but the big flatscreen was given away to AmVets. I don't miss it, the space now occupied by stacks of books.

As I sit in the quiet, a small sparrow blows onto the sill like a bright scrap of paper, his heart pumping in his throat faster than any pulse. He looks into the house, then away, then into the glass again as if listening, only to dart away as the clock chimes on the hour, then ceases. The chime fills the whole house. Perhaps it’s just sound or perhaps it’s all time, grievance, and grief manifesting as sound for just one instant as planets and gears align. It’s a moment wherein time seems to stop, the sparrow frozen on the sill. Only when that sound stops does time come to life, and by then the bird is gone. Had I been glued to the TV, or my Smartphone (oh look, another cat meme!) I would have missed that.

The only sound now is that of breath and the tick of the old clock. I don’t deliberately listen to it, the ticks seemingly beyond the realm of hearing; then in a moment, with that one tick your ears respond to, you are acutely aware of the long diminishing train of time you did not hear. How many ticks in this house in a hundred years? How many after I am long gone? Yet I feel the presence of others that have lived here, for they perhaps aren’t truly dead but simply were worn down by the minute clicking of small gears. The echo of those who sat in this room do not disturb me; they are part of this house. Just like the sound of wood, its creak one of murmuring bones; and the air that taps on ancient glass speaks of deep winds that witnessed more than time.

Later, I will briefly check the news, the weather, send my husband a note that we're doing fine, then pour the last of the coffee. I'm not unaware of what is beyond my insular world; there is a war ongoing somewhere, there is crime, there is evil. It’s all out there somewhere, like all darkness pressing against the house like water does a dam. Not with obvious movement, just that steady pressure that is the desire to break through. But inside, fur me at this moment, I chose to concentrate on the light that seeps outward through the cracks between the curtains. So much of it here that it could be shared with the darkness.

I grab a book, Sunny having settled down for a little nap after yard time, dog food and 15 minutes of warfare with "Claude the Nylabone Lobster".

As the afternoon progresses, the sounds will pick up, the sirens of both police and ambulance, the of traffic in and out of the city, the 4-lane road a half block from us a key route to both the Tollway and Expressway. The garbage trucks will make their way down the alley to collect what's left in the Racoon Bento Boxes the village provides for trash and recycling. I'll make my own trek out, to drop a meal made for a shut-in, clothing and cozy sleepwear for a homeless shelter, a stop at Trader Joe's to do battle with moms stocking up on cheap wine reinforced by kids with mini shopping carts while I try to fend for myself in the roasted nut aisle.

When I get home, the only kids on our block will be out, as yesterday was a day of rain. I don't mind the sometimes-loud sounds of their play. The family is of modest means and the kids don't have tablets and phones, they have bikes and old scooters and balls and bats, numerous small dogs, and a dad that plays ball with them when he gets home in his work van. I smile, knowing they can't comprehend how precious this time will be to them some day.

My parents raised me that way; we were allowed to be kids as long as our minds embraced the world with the wonder of childhood. As the world contemplated old disasters and future hopes, we were simply set free to be children. We wore no bicycle helmets; we drank from the garden hose; our mothers never organized a “play date,” yet we made enough friends that we rarely came inside until the light had bled out of the sky. We’d run and we’d ride, calling loudly into the wind until the shouts of those years mounted toward a final crescendo, passing beyond the reach of hearing.

So, the sound brings me joy, and I put on some music as I put this morning's sourdough bread into the oven to bake. One loaf will go to a neighbor, another to a friend with a husband recovering from a stroke, and the other saved for sandwiches. Vivaldi's The Four Season fills the kitchen as I bustle around, happy that my day does not involve meetings, hazmat suits, politicians blathering, or the whirring noise of a Stryker 810 autopsy saw (only slightly more annoying than the sound politicians make). What noise is in my life is only what I allow in. I will likely be buried someday still owning a Flip Phone and never having seen an episode of The View and for that I am eternally grateful.

As I pull the bread from the oven, I notice  some cars slowly coming up the street, looking for parking. Likely a wedding or baptism at the Catholic church around the corner. Soon there would be the sound of church bells; a sound that does more than note another hour, one more increment of time and grief that’s ticked since Genesis. It’s the sound of hope and faith, one that leaves the air with a sharp instrument of promise as a dog joyously barks and children play.

I'm not missing my TV at all.