Our Roof

Growing up I learned that if you listen closely to the sounds your house makes at certain times you can know a whole lot of what's going on around you.

For example:

My sister and I both learned the violin. She started taking violin lessons at the age of 5 and I started with her teaching me when I was in the third (?) grade and then my mom signed me up for private lessons with my sister's teacher. For this I will ever think that my mom is SUPER-MOM. Having a child that plays an instrument means having a mom (or dad) that knows how to use creativity, love, and persistance in ensuring that learning is taking place. One of the rules in our house growing up was that practicing MUST be done before anything fun like TV watching or playing. My mom, however, would be away from home for a little while right when my sister and I got home sometimes. If you were really tricky/lucky you could time it right and "fool" mom into thinking that you were the most obedient child in the entire world and chose on your own to practice those 30 minutes she was away from home. Meanwhile you chould watch [insert afterschool cartoon of choice here] to your heart's content. The real important thing was to have your violin ready, music out and to have the TV low enough that you could hear the start of the garage opening. Then you would run to the front room and start playing in the middle of a song. My sister and I thought we were pretty tricky. (I'm sure the racket we must ahve made running the length of our house never clued our mom into our little trick.) The point is, the opening of the garage could tell you what to do next.

Example #2:

In high school I could always tell who came/left our house and why by the sounds around the house. This was especially handy when I'd made a complete mess in our basement doing various activities (ie. dirty dishes from eating in front of the basement TV, dirty clothing from being out in the snow, scraps from sewing.) If it was Mom I knew that I needed to start cleaning pronto! If it was Dad however, cleaning could take place later, probably tomorrow.

In all the years of listening to the house, I've never had a house tell me so much about what is going on outside as the one in which my husband and I currently live. First of all there's the sound of our furnace. My husband and I held off turning on our heat for as long as possible because a) it's really loud and b) we're cheap. The colder it gets though the more it turns on. I have noticed the nights are getting much colder by the number of times I am awakened in the night by the sound of a 747 right next to our headboard. (The furnace is located on the other side of the wall.) Then there are the numerous places around the windows that must have small cracks in the wall. I know this becuase it's getting windy and when the wind blows I can hear it blowing through ALL of these cracks. Also the wind sort of moves our blinds. Finally, there's the roof. The roof of our trailor is metal and sort of acts like a drum. I feel very connected with the wildlife living outside and occasionally on top of our trailor because everytime they run across the roof you can hear the pitter-patter of their tiny feet. But the best, and perhaps loudest thing that our roof tells us is when it's windy. The wind must be able to get under one of the layers in the metal and move it around some becuase it sounds like thunder. That's why I knew before I even got up this morning that a storm had moved through in the night. I was surprised to find out that it had dropped about 4 inches of snow on my car!