Sounds

I'm sitting at my window at the end of a long, hard payroll day. My world is filled with sounds today. I hear the train whistle blowing, over and over, which is a sound I love. Everywhere we have lived, except our newest house, we have always been able to hear the train whistle. Once we lived in an apartment which was directly in front of the tracks. When my son was a toddler, he would stand at the back screen door and watch it go by.

Sirens are blaring from the streets below my third floor window. Everyday, it is the police or fire trucks. Usually on a false alarm when they are near our building, just for precautions sake. Or possibly for a wreck on a nearby hyway.

The parking lot below is full of downtown workers leaving for home. They talk together as they walk fast across the lots to get to the parking decks. We have extra people out today, protesters. Think I'll walk out the back door when I leave.

The cleaning ladies outside my closed door. The clock on the wall... ticking my life away. The pounding voice of the life I want and can't have.

My own inner voice rushing me out the door to all the duties I must attend to at home.

All the memories that I carry with me and can't seem to put away or outrun.

My friend telling me just today I should "work to live, and not live to work". Yes, sometimes I leave it all at work, and have nothing left over to carry home, or to take care of myself with.

My son's voice ringing in my ears for all the things he wants, and the things we won't give him, or faciltate for him. All the ways he compares himself to all those around him, who he thinks has a better life.

The soft calls of nature beckoning me to come back as soon as I can. The sounds I need to hear; birds calling in the trees, the babbling of the creeks, the leaves under my shoes, the rushing of the waterfall.

And, of course, the now familiar sound of raindrops.

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