Good Morning.
At precisely 7:20 yesterday morning, a tree service cranked up a couple of chain saws and began taking out a large oak in the neighbors' front yard. The saws droned on for over an hour and then the branches were fed into a chipper thing.
The dog wasn't concerned in the slightest about any of it. She also doesn't worry about the Air Guard jets that roar over the house or the motorcycles that occasionally blow down the street. Thunderstorms are another matter. She is terrified of them and whimpers at the first harrumph ten miles away. She hates the firecrackers that are set off around the neighborhood over the Fourth of July. The minute the vacuum cleaner is turned on, not a particularly regular occurrence in my home, she runs to another room and hides. The dishwasher doesn't distress her at all, however, and she sleeps through anything on television, even the gunfire during a western. Don't call me between noon and three on Saturday because I will be watching
back to back episodes of The Virginian.
I can identify with the dog and her preference for certain sounds and a dislike for others. People munching on popcorn at the movies can make me change my seat despite the looks of disgust, and someone coughing in church or at a concert is very concerning. Even worse is when he or she unwraps a cough drop, a process that is sometimes agonizingly prolonged.
Other sounds don't bother me at all. The splatter of raindrops on a window is magical, the dog slurping her water in waltz time is delightful, and the rhythm of clothes turning over in a dryer is oddly soothing. I wake up in a split second if a woodpecker greets the day by poking at a telephone pole but find it charming and bucolic. I enjoy the swish of a street sweeper and the clatter of a snowplow. I like wind gusts up to 35 m.p.h.
My husband jiggled his car keys, squeaked around in his desk chair, and whisked food items in a bowl at the velocity of a hummingbird flapping its winds. His sleep pattern treated the listener, fond of him though she was, to sonorities well-known to many women, but in my case, they were embellished with sputters that sounded like a car running out of gas. I tried pushing at him a bit and stuffing Kleenex in my ears, but then I wouldn't be able to hear a burglar trying to get into the house, and I had little confidence that a crisis could be handled by my beloved who tended to sleep on his good ear or the dog who had never been tested about her willingness to disable an intruder.
During his last weeks on this earth, I became completely oblivious to all of this stuff. I didn't care about the desk chair or the car keys. It would have been a joy to hear him stirring up some eggs for breakfast, but he didn't feel like eating even the soft foods he could still swallow. Today I would gladly listen to anyone's popcorn if we could go to the movies, and I would celebrate his rumbling away at night. And then probably head for the couch.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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