What Liz Said

I used to go to a summer camp in Colchester, Vermont where I was at first a camper and then a counselor. I remember when I was a counselor that there was a girl there who was really sweet. She was from Boca Raton. She was outgoing. She was young and fresh. She had braces. All around a great young kid. Through the reunion wonders of MySpace, she found me. Now she is a happy mama of two beautiful girls. She’s no longer a girl, but a woman, a wife, and (as I mentioned) a mother. Coming on the heels of finding my first gray hair, I’m feeling a little older than my own “young and fresh” self. Time is going so quickly.

* * * *

Since we’ve moved here, I’ve had a hard time sleeping. I couldn’t put my finger on it. We live on the ground floor that opens right up into a vast courtyard. Today the good folks at Verizon are out there with their jackhammers and other various shades of loud banging equipment. When it was at its loudest, I went to lay down for a nap.

It dawned on me in a flash.

When I was 13, I moved from the busy loud apartment complex with my mom to the quiet, in the middle of the woods, four bedroom colonial in Great Falls with my dad.  I had trouble sleeping for the longest time. It was too quiet. I didn’t function without the loud urban noises of police and ambulance sirens, the fighting of drunks in alleys, etc. I finally had my first night of good sleep after moving out of my mother’s apartment six years later, when I moved to Boston. The T (the Boston subway) literally went right by the window, and it wasn’t the greatest part of town, so my little neighborhood never slept. Well, except for me.

This is like another Great Falls. It’s a wonderful complex and I do like living here, but all I ever hear around here are birds chirping and children playing in the courtyard. Maybe an occasional distant siren, but that’s about it. Today’s racket is a blessing. It reminded me that I am someone who belongs in a city.

In suburbia no one can hear you scream.

Thank you, Verizon, for the first good sleep I’ve had since living Boston. And that was two years ago.