Our voices carry. So do our footsteps,
the whir of our weed whackers,
our church bells and laughter,
the cacophonies of pained arguments,
the languages of our seasons.

By Lori Hall Steele
      My new neighbor, a professional musician, says he shuts windows before practicing the trumpet so not to disturb the neighbors, so he can feel like he’s alone and unwatched. I nod. I want him to keep believing that no one hears a thing. Nothing. Certainly not that tomcat yowl coming from his closed-up house. I love those strains of Marvin Gaye and Al Green through the glass, the gift of brass unbridled in mid-afternoon. I love the fact that noise knows no property lines. So I don’t say a thing.
      But the truth is, in city neighborhoods, our voices carry. So do our footsteps, the whir of our weed whackers, our church bells and laughter, the cacophonies of pained arguments, the languages of our seasons. City dwellers live within earshot of life. And we are all instruments in a small human symphony.
      Even winter’s stillness makes noise. It is the opus of hush. In it, we hear pine branches snap from the weight of wet snow, and we understand danger. Cars slosh through melts to get where they’re going, braving the peril. One night last winter, friends and I made angels in the snow in Hannah Park as alabaster snowflakes descended like stars. Through the soft falling and laughter, as I laid in my angel, I imagined the cadence of furnaces turning on and off throughout Traverse City’s Central Neighborhood, a muffled assurance that all was well. Fires were burning against the dark and cold. I knew neighbors were sleeping safely, drawing metered breaths and dreaming their dreams.
      Spring changes all that. Spring cranks the volume knob. Through opened windows come pizzicato birds, clanging swing sets, chimes, barking dogs, heels clicking on pavement. Buses idle, drunks sing “Miss American Pie” at 2 a.m., and jets carry people back through skies. Children walk down sidewalks singing made-up melodies. It seems some collective howl of exuberance at winter’s lift.
      Summer, on the other hand, mimics a lullaby with its murmured porch talk, pedaled bikes and humming air conditioners, a soothing song punctuated occasionally by the metronome of basketballs on driveways. At some point, during the longest days, a soundlessness arrives. It's that sliver of time where everything seems to have stopped growing and stands still in the light: Here we are. The hurries and noises of fall are coming, but for a minute, everything except August is far.
      During one of those nights, I fell asleep on the couch to the song of crickets and breeze. My husband woke me when he returned late from work. A windstorm had blown in, he said. We heard an explosion outside, followed by a crash, and suddenly, all our neighbors were outside in the tempest in pajamas, staring at a curbside tree that had fallen neatly between two houses.
      Noises bring us together. They can show us how enmeshed our lives are, how closely we live to nature despite our street grids and utilities. Last fall, a storm rushed down the bay into Traverse City. The lights went out. They came back on. They went back out. Neighbors came over and we sat on the porch to witness this spectacle of weather.
      We listened silently to this sudden-onset riot of flashing lightning and pelting rain. My dog barked at the jolting thunderclaps. Cars splashed down the flooded street. Children ran down the street, screaming in joy and terror as they tried to make it home. Sirens wailed to the east and north. We were speechless.
      “It’s mayhem,” a neighbor finally said.
      It was the beginning of autumn, whose noises erupt like confetti through summer’s mantra. Doors slam as children head to school. The sounds of football and bands march down neighborhood streets. Walnuts and pears fall to grass and pavement. Weather blusters through trees.
      We start closing the windows. But even through that glass, through every season, I hear the whistle of a train, something faraway, yet so close, a vibrato through the darkness. When I hear its sweet-dream voice coming through our streets, I know it’s time for sleep. It wishes us all good night.
      My trumpet-playing neighbor says he closes the window so he feels alone. It is a gesture we all make. We try to demarcate the world of noise, walling in our daily echoes with cedar hedges, drowning the outside chorus with backyard fountains. But our music can’t be fenced in. The jazz improv of our lives tells us, clearly: We’re not alone.

Published in Northern HOME.