Life In Suburbia
(Written 20’ish years ago)
I tend to be a very auditory kind of person – I learn best by listening, I remember voices long after I’ve forgotten faces, and my memories and impressions of people, places and events are often tied to auditory cues.
I grew up in the country where my constant sonic companions were the songs and conversations of birds, the rustle of the breeze in the birch leaves and hiss in the spruces, and the soft chattering of the brook behind our house.
Now I live in a “nice” small city neighborhood. The lawns are well manicured. The cookie cutter houses are kept in good repair, and the streets and yards are alive with the sounds of children and their pets. Unfortunately, that’s the problem for me. Even the nicest neighborhoods can be ruined by neighbors.
My bedroom window is about 15 feet from my nearest neighbor’s garage. He keeps his house, lawn, boat and car spotlessly clean and in perfect repair and does it by employing every gasoline or electric powered lawn, yard and home repair device known to man. He also believes in getting an early start – especially on nice weekend mornings like this one. A few years ago when he first moved in, we were awakened at 545a on a Sunday morning to the sound of him driving a fencepost into the ground outside our bedroom window with a sledge hammer. Since then we’ve been treated to extended conversations on a cordless phone, golf ball driving practice, leaf blowing, lawn mowing, snow blowing, drilling, sawing, hammering, vacuuming and all manner of other racket. Combined with the smell of his ever-present cigarette which gets sucked in by our bedroom window fan in the summer, it’s a real feast for the senses. This is in addition to the rest of the neighborhood noise that usually starts at a more reasonable hour – dogs yapping, kids yelling, basketballs bouncing, dirt bikes buzzing like giant, angry, mechanized bumblebees in the empty lots a few streets away, car stereo subwoofers booming… I’m listening to somebody dancing with a jackhammer on one side and waltzing with a chainsaw on the other as I write this.
It all makes me long fervently for a house like the one in which I grew up – where the sounds were mostly just the music of God’s creation. I would gladly give up my home in manicured suburbia with it’s close access to good schools, public utilities and transportation for one like the one in which I grew up – surrounded by trees whose leaves rustle and needles hiss in the breeze. I’d trade all my public utilities and access to good schools for a front porch rocker or a hammock from which I could watch the clouds drift by in a casual blue sky and just be still and know that He is God. Someplace where the most intrusive sounds are the inscrutable conversations of birds, the chattering of the brook and the occasional slam of an old wooden screen door.