Incline Thine Ear

This morning daughter Gillian and I left the house on a mission: to go to the neighbor's pond (Lake JoeBeGone) and acquire some vertical bog element for my little water feature in the grotto. (With said neighbors' blessings.)

Gill and I took with us one dog, one shovel, and one red wagon. My Radio Flyer was unbelievably noisy going down the road. I felt sort of bad, this being the Day of Rest, and here we were, tramping some mile or so on a gravel road, pulling a rattly wagon that was so loud that neither of us bothered trying to start a conversation. Probably awaking our 5 neighbors along the way...

The noise took me back to a time long, long ago, when Paul & I spent a year living in Cairo. The population, dirt, dust, noise, smells, and all elements of living in this city were often overwhelming. Paul & I lived in a sumptuous flat (balconies, marble floors), and the flat was such a contrast to what was outside in the neighborhood world. My kitchen was tiny (perfectly fine, since my newlywed kitchen skills, too, were miniscule.) The heat to the kitchen stove was a butane gas cylinder, which we had to replace periodically, much like the propane gas tanks one uses for barbeques here in the States. It was called buta gas (pr.: bootah). It was quite some time before I got clear answers as to how one acquired one's buta gas. Neighbors would say, "The buta man came today." I didn't see him! How could I keep missing him?!
Finally, one day, a friend pointed out that the buta men walked down the street with their donkey-led carts, pulling buta cylinders. They tapped the cylinder with a pole which made a pingy-sounding "ting-ting". And this is what I should listen for, on any given day, since the buta men did not have schedules or routes to their days. And I soon learned to recognize the "ting-ting" from the midst of the cacophony of the streets of Cairo.

How funny, looking back. How many of us can pinpoint a tiny sound in their day which might signal something necessary to one's household?

I know my dogs can discern the UPS and FedEx trucks a mile away; it just makes their day! I can't figure out what sounds so different from those two trucks and any of the other tractors, trucks, and whatnot that travel down our road. But our dogs have it on their aural radar.

Much as I learned to listen for the "ting-ting".

When I sit outside in my grotto, I can hear a hummingbird before I see it. Out gardening this morning, I heard the cyclist's wheels whirring long before he appeared round the bend. I had time to stand up, turn around, and yell, "Good morning!" to the unsuspecting rider. Our sense of hearing needs to be honed. Too many people take no notice of the sounds around them. One, perhaps two days each spring, we can walk out to our orchard in the evening and hear an ever-so-gentle buzzing atop the peach trees. Honeybees. Doing their jobs. It's quite amazing to listen to them.

I see that summer storms are in the forecast in the next few hours; it certainly won't be difficult to hear the thunder. What about the birds singing after the storms have passed?