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Tbrady

Tracy McArdle is the author of Confessions of a Nervous Shiksa and Real Women Eat Beef. She spent twelve years in New York and Los Angeles as a publicity executive at such companies as Turner Broadcasting, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Pictures Entertainment before moving home to New England to wr...

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The Sound of Life (not Music)

Tracy McArdle

Hello and welcome to the first entry of my guest stint at Skirt!  I am very excited to be here and honored to be writing for the Skirt crowd.   As a novelist whose first two books were published to deafening indifference, it’s lovely to have an audience, even if it’s curiosity seekers, people who feel bad for me or  who only visit once out of obligation.

I usually write humorous essays and entries (you can find some, as well as my blog, Getting Some, at www.tracymcardle.net.)

But I had a strange week, one of those introspective digressions accompanied by at least three instances of The Matrix playing every time I turned on the T.V.  So I decided to think about the past several days and focus on one of the unexpected moments, one of those karma jolts that make you feel alive in a way that movies can’t.  And I love movies.

My father in law died.  It was a sobering experience to say the least, and part of it included my husband’s siblings and spouses and children, descending upon my mother in law’s house to offer support.  It was Easter weekend, and we were fortunate to have each other and the accompanying chaos on the holiday, under the circumstances.  I think the sight of the kids tearing through their Easter baskets lifted everyone’s spirits.

My husband and I and our 14 month old son were stationed in a kind neighbor’s house, in our own private bedroom with an adjacent bath and kitchen.

Seven months pregnant and exhausted by the guilt of  beingexhausted but feeling like I shouldn’t be exhausted considering what everyone else was goign through, I was resting comfortably and “taking ten” while my husband gave our son a bath.

I don’t know about you but there are not many moments in my week where I am being still, doing nothing and ...listening.  I wasn’t even reading.  I was just lying there, wondering how everyone was going to go on, wondering how on earth you keep living your life when your partner of forty years is suddenly gone.  And then I tuned in to the sound.  It was splashing and laughing.  My fourteen month old can’t really talk yet,but he communicates very well.  Noises of joy and screeches of delight.  Shrieks and yelps.  Exclamations of human curiosity.  Surprise and wonder with each outburst of unedited sound.  A simple thing – water and what it can do – occupying the spaces of his mind and the pleasure chambers of his little heart.

But the most amazing sound was that of my husband’s laughter.  Loud, true and deep, it echoed into the tub and down the hall.  I hadn’t heard him laugh like that in days.  It was a simple thing, and I was listening.  For  ten minutes it went on, and I just lay there, listening and thinking that my husband and his son were living life together, in one of those unrecorded, unedited moments, where nothing else mattered, time stopped, and a generation gathered steam to shoulder  on.