The ticking of rain against the window, cars on slick cement, the slow drip of drops from tree-leaves. Outside our living room window, the trees are turning red from green; an effect like a box of crayons melting together. The catt snuffles occasionally from his window seat. Now and then he’ll stretch, survey the room to make sure we’re still here.
The living room is silent this morning for the first time in months. The radio – the CBC, Radio One – has been my constant companion since I have been home on maternity leave. Everything just seemed more tolerable with a little background noise. Maybe it’s the frenzy of summer – heat creating urgency; sweat fueling panic.
Aside: I have always felt more pressure in the summertime. Where summer is supposed, by most, to be a time of relaxation, fun, vacation, I have found that the impetus to do these things has the opposite effect on me. I prefer to relax, have fun and vacation all year ’round and I resent the implication that I can only do it between June and September 21st. It is as though through the increased hours of daylight I am offered the opportunity to do more and be more and if I squander that time, oh precious time, then I am a fool who deserves mediocrity. Fie, summer pressure! (I suppose this is a result of my being a west-coaster, in a way. We are not crippled by our winters the way others are [aside from Annual Snow Panic]; therefore our summers need not contain as much activity. I can walk to the store all year long. People in Northern Alberta can not.)
The radio has given consistency to my days. The national time signal at 10:00 am; the news theme music; “Sounds Like Canada” as hosted by Jian Gomeshi (to whose special gorgeousity I composed a loving entry several weeks ago but never posted because I edited too long and then it was no longer timely because Shelagh Rogers was back and besides, it makes Saint Aardvark squirmy when I mention how much I love Jian Gomeshi [but never liked Moxy Fruvous much, so]); even the terrible stylings of Priya Ramu on the afternoon show (full disclosure: some days she lost out to Oprah and other days she lost out to Tyra); all of these things were appreciated by me because they were The Same and when one is spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a newborn baby, anything that is The Same is greatly appreciated.
After the shootings in Montreal last week, when the constant discussion & dissection became too much, (I would just like to mention that it drives me absolutely batshit bananas that in the wake of an incident like this, all talk goes to gun control instead of mental health) I switched to Radio Canada, the French CBC on FM. They play music all day – Spanish, Italian, African, French, Canadian music – and the news breaks are in French so I could continue to be blissfully ignorant of world events for a while.
Today I opted for no radio at all. I have been listening to the near-silence of our house – clock ticking, catt grunting, muted traffic through closed windows. The baby has had a very long nap and, as a result, I have enjoyed both breakfast AND a cup of hot coffee (hot at the beginning AND the end).
We have built our own rhythm, he and I, in the foreground of a noisy, chaotic summer, reaching a point in our relationship where we can sit for moments in comfortable silence, listening to each other breathe. It is remarkable timing that brings Fall to the door, with her bags of comfort food and corduroy pants. I am ready to sit still, honing our rhythm, blanketed by the white noise of the clouds.
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