My heart sinks
when I see a city worker come to the door to put a flyer on the knob. Nothing
good comes from that. My friend goes to get it and the worker stops when the
door opens to talk and answer all our questions: What’s about to happen? Why
must this happen? How long will it go on?
How long, O Lord? How long?
My hope drains like the color from my face when I hear the words, “Four weeks, but I think that’s optimistic. Probably closer to six.”
Six weeks of hell. My own personal hell of beeping trucks, raging machines, and thrumming engines. Of dust and bustle and the expulsion from my morning spot on the front porch in the sunshine and (sometimes) peace. Of the interruption of afternoons of writing, reading, and tutoring session prep.
“I’m going to have to move,” I tell my friend.
The second recourse to up and moving on is to buy sound dampening ear protectors. We do.
The first couple of days the city employees bring in equipment and get things set up. It’s a moderate amount of bustle and bother. Prematurely I think, this might not be so bad.
One can dream. At least until one is woken up.
The work starts at 7:00 A.M. on the dot, an unwelcome alarm, and thus the real noise begins on the third day. I have this hope that there will be a sound break around lunch time, but this day they take no lunch. Not the loud trucks nor the foundation-rumbling, concrete-removing machine.
Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, the children’s book by Richard Scarry, didn’t prepare me for the noise associated with machine-driven work. I’m also extremely noise sensitive. I know this. It’s an unfortunate gift to carry. In my next life, I’ll choose another option. Sound dampening ear protectors can only do so much.
I do my best to make the best of it. This too shall pass. It can’t last forever. Nothing does.
Filling dirt into the hole they’ve carved out for replacing the water pipes, the city workers go on past 4:00 when the flyer-giving city worker had told us they would stop.
They lied to us, I think. This will never end.
All my hopes for pieces of quiet in the interminable hours are dashed. Hope for a break in the noise, hope for an on-time ending to the work day. How long a day is when one is braced against the constant sound bombardment.
Breathe. Relax. Breathe.
On the fourth day, I go out to the backyard in the afternoon to catch a little warmth and sunshine with my ear protectors on. Out of sight of the milling workers. Out of immediate gasping breath of cement dust, asphalt smell, and the residue of filler rocks.
Endurance comes in waves. I do manage to get some work done. Some.
Talking with my dad about a different subject he encourages me to not couch good things in ifs or maybes, to go ahead and see that bright future.
I get off the phone and remember a verse about a “hope that doesn’t disappoint.” For isn’t that what we all want? To hope and not to be let down? To be promised and to see the fulfilment of that promise? To not be driven insane by bone-jarring noise pollution? To live in a world where we are all safe, have clean water, fresh air, healthy food to eat, and access to the healing effects of nature?
Still, there is hope that one day this work will end. (How long, O Lord, how long?) And, in the meantime, I can seek out the world outside of this neighborhood and do as a meditation teacher suggested and “[refuse] to stay immobile in [my] fear and dread.” Even better, I can “not be fooled into believing there is more pain than goodness.”
It may still be weeks down the literal and proverbial road, but please, let this hope be one that does not disappoint.
Until that time, just beyond the noise, beyond the neighborhood is peace, goodness, quiet, and hope.
