The quintessential setting for a seven-degree lazy afternoon with the kids watching some basketball game at school and my teenaged daughter working on a history project (an unusual interpretation of the Gilded Age, a nine-block quilt). I took advantage of my fortuitous circumstances and left the shards of our day where they were, curled up on one of our matching love seats with my parka as my pillow and a lush, rabbit-fur-like shroud of a throw blanket in front of the fire I’d made an hour earlier and gave myself 20 minutes.
As I lay in that drunken sweet spot between wakefulness and all-the-way asleep, I melted as I listed to the quiet sounds surrounding me. The dishwasher humming along, the washing machine whirring, my daughter ironing, the plane in the distance, the fire occasionally popping, the heating kicking on. Intoxicating as a lullaby.
When our college son was home for the holidays it was like going back in time to his high school years when we’d fall asleep to the purr of his belt sander, which I think rests right below our headboard in the attached work shop. When I was little I’d go to bed listening to the the late-night 80s sit coms or news of the day from my room, my dad on the living room couch as sentinel, the dull roar of the tv my comfort. I still love hearing Todd’s tools as he works late into the night on a house project or him turning the pages of his seed catalogs and beekeeping magazines in bed next to me. I like listening to the running water in the bathroom next to us as our daughter takes her late-night shower and gets ready for bed. Not always the softest sounds, but to me it’s the ordinary-ness of it all that delights me.
As I was lulled to sleep in this cozy afternoon environ, I couldn’t help but ask what exactly what it was I loved so much about all I was listening to. And I think it’s because all the sounds just feel familiar. It’s comforting to just be a part of everyday house noises because it means life is ticking along, work’s getting done, but nothing’s urgent or stressed. The canning jars bubbling on the stove or the crockpot’s occasional spit. The lawnmower a few houses over. The trimmer next door. No matter the season, any of these harmonious sounds coalesce into a reassuring sort of din, a backdrop that calms me and helps me feel cocooned, like life is still normal; it's all so homey-feeling.
And that’s just it. They’re simply the sounds of home. They have a way of helping me feel safe, like I've found my oasis. Just like my sister tells me about the birds. As long as you hear birds singing, the world isn’t in eminent danger. Meaning a super volcano isn’t about to erupt. Or a tsunami isn’t coming our way. I guess these sounds just soothe my soul in a catatonic world that is so harsh and shrill. These quiet—or just routine—background tones remind me that even as crazy as it all feels to live during these turbulent times, there is still peace. And for me that’s just being home. The soft hum of my appliances, confirming that I’ve accomplished even something small in the day, eases my anxieties and worries about so much out there. I bask in the percolating water filter system, the drop of the ice in the freezer bucket, the dryer churning its load, our dogs breathing beside me, an occasional squeak in the settling roof, sounds of a house. They help me re-group, re-setting my soul. I'm just content, happy to be home to hear them.
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