Listening

"I didn't do nuffin, it wasn't me, it was some other cat, don't know whatchar talkin' about. You can't see me."


Last night, we heard Eleanor scuffling. Zeppo alert, but stayed back. She brought the mouse into the living room and seemed to throw it as a demonstration to Zeppo. He watched carefully. We let her toss it about, it's been a long time since her last mouse. Eventually she walked off, and I picked it up and threw it away. Praised her prowess. No rodent stands a chance in this house.


Last night a cat curled beside me, and I'm not entirely certain it was Eleanor. Their fur is different, but not as different as Moby and Eleanor's fur. Zeppo's tail is much longer, thinner and sleeker, but the tail in question was tucked out of reach. I can more easily tell them apart at night by Eleanor's quiet purr, or Zeppo's always audible voicings. He's always talking about something. Eleanor keeps her own counsel. They chase and wrestle, and we giggle with joy at the sounds of cats in the night.

The new kettle is much quieter, I'm not accustomed to its sounds yet, I've missed a few boilings. Thankfully, it shuts itself off. The fridge makes the oddest noises all the time, much harder to get used to those. Or the dishwasher going at night, better water rate, but occasionally startling.

We have new nurses, and we've discussed the phenomenon of OR Ears. The first year in the OR, you can't hear anything. Between surgeons mumbling toward the patient, the white noise of equipment, and masks hiding mouths, it all seems impossible. Except that the old staff seems to be hearing everything, opening suture or spiking fluid bags without being asked, apparently. After a while, one learns the voices, and what they are likely to ask for, what the different sounds from the surgical site mean, which alarms are our responsibility and which are for anesthesia. With each new OR, new OR Ears need to be grown, but it takes less time than the original pair. Perhaps they are simply retuned.

The House has her sounds, of course. The creaks in floors, the breathing of a complex structure in a changing environment, one side heated by sun, the other side cooling down, moisture variations, different materials expanding and contracting differently. I hear them in the background now, comforting. In my parent's house, I always heard those noises as threatening. My mother's assurance that it was the house "settling" was the opposite of reassuring, how was a house older than my parents still "settling"? I feared it would settle into a deep hole, burying me with it.

Every apartment had it's own unidentifiable noises, usually heard late at night, when the dark quiet lets them through. Furnace sounds, pipes, neighbors. Takes a while to know which ones to ignore, which are different and need attention.

In Basic, the barracks noises were constant, troops chanting cadences outside at all hours, the airstrip nearby, our snores and sneezes and coughs, Drill Sargeant footsteps - each one distinct, toilets flushing, voices as fireguard changed. We got to know them all for what they meant to us. Cadences shouted outside our window became lullabys.

As the sounds of semi-trucks air-horns and the horns and bells of ships on the river, even sirens, were comforting familiarity in childhood. When I moved to the north woods, I couldn't sleep for all the damn quiet.