Savoring the (not quite) Silence

Ideally, I would have stretched and been slow to open my eyes, savoring that last delicious moment, the one just between sleeping and waking, aware of having had a long, luxurious, late Sunday afternoon nap.

Instead, my eyes popped open the moment my consciousness registered the muffled phrase that I heard David calling,

Wait…Wait…Don’t Go!

That utterance woke me, combined with the vague realization that David had just flipped the deadbolt on the front door and was about to fling it wide open in hopes of having a chat with the city council candidate who was walking back toward the sidewalk, campaigning for the upcoming primary election.

I wonder what she might have said if I had not been successful in shooing David from the door and keeping clear of all front facing windows—a move taught to me at a young age by my mother, wanting the avoid the Jehovah’s Witnesses who frequently used to proselytize in our neighborhood, distributing copies of The Watchtower door-to-door.

I wonder if that candidate could have kept her train of thought when she caught sight of me, groggily heading towards the door, one hand trying to massage the kink in my neck which was stiff from having slept sitting up in a chair, while at the same time trying to decide whether to use the other hand to shake hers, which she had extended, or to remove the Peltor Noise Reduction Junior Earmuffs that I had borrowed from David.

Would she have stayed to deliver her campaign spiel?  Or backed slowly away from the door, having received David’s new standard salutation, a heartfelt “AHOY,” all the while wondering if I had donned the noise reducing gear because I had hastily returned from the shooting range, or was, in fact, having target practice in my backyard—a clear violation of city ordinances.

Whatever the scenario she might have imagined, I am sure that she could not have guessed that I was desperate to rest for a moment.

Yes, I wanted to sleep, but more importantly I needed a break from the noise of my sensory-seeking boy, who was playing some classical music on a continuous loop on his CD player, Brahms’ Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano in E minor—enjoyable enough, but when combined with the omnipresent episode of SpongeBob Squarepants on the portable DVD player, a YouTube video of an agitating washing machine on the iPad and David catching air on the trampoline, whipped into a hand flapping frenzy, the washing machine was not the only thing becoming agitated.