Noise or not?

Working in an industry where there are people in your face all the time, when you must deal with people on their terms, when the daily chatter of hotel life is non-stop, it makes you crave quiet. When you come home after an eight hour shift there is nothing you want except silence. No music, no talk, nothing. Just quiet. That was me, for years.  I would play music on my days off, sometimes not even then. With the loud, constant ringing I have in my ears most of the time, quiet was fine.

At some point you realize that noise is different for each of us.  Depending on where you work, you might be surrounded by noise all the time but it might not be intrusive. Or you might be the person who doesn't mind the background confetti of sounds, always ongoing. Maybe that background chatter doesn't feel personal so it is easy to ignore it, like constant white noise.  

The other evening, I sat at a nice bar in a nice restaurant having a glass of wine while waiting for some take-out food. The place was noisy, as restaurants usually are, but surprisingly I found that the noise was mildly entertaining.  Noise was coming from the patrons at the tables, noise was in back of me from the hostess stand, chatter from other people sitting at the bar, clattering from the open kitchen, a slight murmur from the bartenders as they worked. Many layers of noise but none of it disturbing or annoying. (Of course the glass of wine and the promise of good food probably were factors in the lack of annoyance.) And I realized that it wasn't sounds that bugged me. It was when the noise intruded on my personal space: people chatting at me when I didn't want to chat, the telephone ringing when I didn't want to answer it. That kind of noise over an eight hour shift made me crave the silence.

Since my life doesn't have eight hour shifts much anymore, I am going to start paying attention more to sounds that I like and that I enjoy.  Except for the cawing of crows, I really like the sounds birds make and I live in a bird-rich area, so I'll start with appreciating that. I might have to sit at restaurant bars more often and bask in the happy noises emanating from that venue. Maybe I will even begin to listen to music when I am alone and enjoy the companionship of that kind of "noise." Maybe my solitary world will become less silent and maybe even more joyful. 

Who knows? Change is good. 

Parents - Siblings - Self

Talking to my older brother Steve the other day, we remarked on how detached we sometimes felt from our other siblings, other people, the world. Not in a bad way, but just slightly removed and thus slightly unemotional.  Maybe it's a generational thing; so many of us baby boomer kids were raised by parents who really had no idea what they were doing and thus were not the most forthcoming with affections, connections, communications.

Or maybe it was just our parents. They didn't have many friends other than in-laws, there were never dinner parties at our house where adults mingled and they never discussed relationships outside of aunts, uncles and cousins.  Our parents really had very little outside life. And it was clear that they didn't really know how to be concerned parents. Perhaps they didn't even like being parents, who knows? But there was never any dialogue about how they felt about us kids, never any positive affirmation about our joys or any support about our sorrows.  That's a huge generalization, of course, because I do remember them being very excited when one of my younger brothers won some science fair award and went on to the state contest. But other than bland comments about grades on report cards or a mediocre, short-lived response about a hand-made Mothers or Fathers Day card, there wasn't a lot of personal interaction.

Now, I could be wrong. I could have entirely forgot that my Mom read to us every night or encouraged us to tell her about our day at school or guided us through making cookies for the first time. That might have happened. But I don't remember it.

The relationship with my siblings is fine. We are all very different people but we all get along. (Mostly.) I know people who haven't spoken to their siblings in years and have no interest in doing so. At least the six of us talk on the phone now and then and we hold no rancor against each other. But I wouldn't say that we are all really connected. Some of us are in touch frequently but some of us, not so much. Do we love each other? Not for me to say. Do I love my siblings?  Yes. And that's a stronger "yes" for some than others.  I like them all as well, some of them more than others but that's probably just because some are more familiar than others, I see them and interact with them more frequently.  And because we are all very different, it's easy to like each one as a separate entity, not just as a sibling.  Would I answer a call from any of them in the middle of the night and drive to their house if they asked?  100% yes.

But there is a coolness in our relationships. A slight distance that one doesn't usually find with really good friends. Maybe it's difficult to be friends with your siblings, maybe there's too much shared genetic language, too much knowledge of our past that precludes close friendship.  I don't know.  

Anyway, just mulling over the past.  And the present. 

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