Carmel Magazine

032 Sharon Randall_Carmel Mag 4/21/13 9:22 AM Page 1 POSTCARDS FROM HOME SHARON RANDALL "Did You Hear That?" es, it was annoying. I kept Y meaning to do something I smiled, then told him a story. As a child, I lived in a house that sat 50 yards, give or take, about it. But I didn't. And gradually, I from a railroad track. more. Except when my husband passed, I'd pump my fist until the engineer blew the whistle. got used to it. I didn't notice it anycomplained. "Don't you hear that?" he'd say. "Doesn't it bug you?" I'd shrug it off and keep loading the dishwasher. I've shrugged off a lot of stuff in my years. Don't even try to tell me that you haven't, too. Then my boy, my youngest, came to visit with his wife and their 2-year-old and their 3-month-old baby. And I could not ignore it anymore. By day, I'd sit in an apple tree waiting for the train. When it This for me was supremely entertaining, far better than chasing cows or jumping barbed-wire fences or playing fetch with a dog that refused to fetch. But at night, when I slept by an open window in a bed that shook with the rumble of the tracks and the roar of the engine and the whine of the whistle, I did not hear a thing. At least, it never woke me. But did I hear it? I don't know. All I know is this: That sound When the boy was little, about the size his 2-year-old is is recorded somehow, somewhere, in my memory, in my cells, in his blue eyes until he was sure I Even now, after all these years, when I hear the rumble now, he'd take my face in his sticky hands and make me look There are many things I've heard without hearing— all etched, imprinted on my memory and my soul. in the very marrow of my bones. heard what he wanted to say. and roar and whine of a freight train, it takes me back, not but with his voice. It's big and deep of night. He still does. Not with his hands, and resonant and commanding like a teacher's. That is what he is: A teacher. In more ways than one. I like to brag that he teaches third grade at the school where he once nearly got kicked out of third grade. If that's a bit of an overstatement, too to that apple tree, but to that bed in that room in the dark Did I hear it? Yes, on some level, surely I did. There are many things I've heard without hearing—all etched, imprinted on my memory and my soul: My parents arguing late at night. My mother weeping in the kitchen. My blind brother waking up to watch a sunrise. My babies snoring softly in their cribs. My teenagers sneaking in past curfew. My late husband fighting for a breath. I want to tell my youngest, the teacher, about all those bad. I'm his mother. I'm allowed. things, everything I have heard and not heard. But the time we n't that sound bother you?" a 2-year-old and his baby brother. This morning, he stood in my kitchen and said, "Mom, doesI looked up from loading the dishwasher. "What sound?" "This one," he said. He opened and shut the door on the fridge, causing a soft, melodic clanging of a half-dozen glass vases that I had stored on its top. "Oh, that?" I said. "I'm used to it. I don't hear it anymore." He laughed. Then he began to explain in his patient, teach- ing voice why exactly I did, in fact, hear it loud and clear. Babies, he said, hear in their mothers' wombs. Dogs and cats prick their ears in their sleep. We all hear and react—with joy or fear or amusement or alarm—to various sounds, whether 32 we think we hear them or not. C ARMEL MAGAZINE•SPRING/SUMMER have together is brief and busy with the comings and goings of So, instead, I ask him to do his mother a favor: Take all those vases off the fridge and put them out in the garage. Which he does, without question. He's good that way, my youngest. My husband will be happy. And I won't have to hear that clanging anymore. Maybe. Sharon Randall is a syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. This column is used by permission. She divides her time between the Monterey Peninsula and "Las Vegas of All Places." She can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson, NV 89077 or at www.sharonrandall.com. 2013

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