Listen to this

When my kids were in preschool, their teachers had them take listening walks. They’d hold hands with a partner and head out into the neighborhood, not speaking. This was a field trip I always volunteered for. I loved watching them wander over the world with their eyes, yanking on their partner, or being yanked, giggling at some naughtiness, muttering to themselves, staring at leaves, a passing car, a misplaced, fluttering ribbon. It was a lesson in how rare real silence is.

 There is such a thing as visual noise, a type of hearing with your eyes. My hearing-impaired friend told me about this miraculous phenomenon, something  to cultivate as compensation for the loss of the auditory sense. For those of us who have full auditory capability, however, hearing with the eyes only makes the world louder.

Spring is a gauntlet of sound. The colors of other people, who all appear so suddenly it’s a shock. The clothes, the eye contact, and the skin. I anticipate this season all year, and yet a part of me dreads it. The meatfest. Flesh everywhere. Men in shorts, women in spaghetti straps. Bare toes. The broad, wide back. People lazing in the park like fair slugs, or lazing in outdoor restaurants, lazing in their own driveways, on their roofs, even on top of their cars.

Then there is the literal noise of the world. I happen to like birds, so I love their return. To me a tiny striped creature whistling without any lips is nothing short of a miracle. Less cheerful are the industrial sounds of spring. Leaf blowers,  weed eaters, and lawn mowers. Notice next time you pass a landscaping crew: they all wear ear protection. Those of us walking by, or working at home, say, do not have ear protection. The leaf blower is, let’s face it, the lazy man’s rake. What’s wrong with a  broom? I remember visiting Mexico, where the incessant, somehow soothing swish-swish of the broom became emblematic of the entire country.

There are other noises. Industrial vacuum cleaners used by commercial cleaning companies . A block away from my house there’s a crew building an addition on a log house. Lots of sawing. Cutting sheet metal, too, which will curl your toes.

Even in the house the raucous world finds its way. The non-commercial vacuum cleaner is no whisper-light. My kids run screaming when they see the blender come out. The food processor is a high-pitched scream, as is the coffee grinder, the range top fan, and the microwave.

It isn’t normal to long for winter just as spring peeks out of its cave. It might not even be normal to think that cold and silence go together, or warmth and sound. How did that get started? Gotta be the cold/death equation, which is nonsense when  you think about it. I mean, yes, the dead are quiet, but does a quiet person need to suggest morbidity? Is a quiet moment necessarily a lonely one? We are teetering so close to the introvert/extrovert debate I might as well dive in: an introvert is not bad. An affection for solitude is not an illness. The desire, when sitting in the middle of a crowded restaurant with friends, to suddenly walk out the back door without another word does not mean you are depressed, antisocial, or mentally ill. You may simply not like noise.

Silence is not scary. It’s a gift.