It's Noisy Here
It's noisy here. Every year, when it finally warms up in Portland and we have to keep all the windows open at night, I start noticing it. The noise of the city never stops. Well, maybe between about 3-5 am it dips a little. . .but I'm usually asleep then, so it's a "tree (not) falling in the woods" sort of a thing. It's mostly road noise, but it's also conversations outside the bar at 1am, car alarms, loud shouting matches in the street (not too many), garbage trucks shaking broken glass and what sounds like dumpsters filled with hubcaps into their trucks at 3am, people talking non-stop on cell phones in the parking lot under our window, drunks peeling out of the parking lot, cat fights on the fire escape, etc.
All-in-all it's not bad. It really helps to have an Orthodox Priest and his wife downstairs. The loudest thing that comes from their apartment is his big laugh. But it's hard on my wife. She was born in NYC, but left there when she was a teenager. When I met her she was living in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula, and before that on Orcas Island in the San Juans. I doubt there are many places on earth quieter than that. I hope that some day I can provide her with a quieter place, but for now my job forces us to stay in the general area, and our love for our church community keeps us in this little urban apartment.
Maybe it's a guy thing, but I struggle with a vague sense of guilt because I'm not able to give my wife all I think she wants and/or needs. I want to be the perfect husband. The unfortunate thing is that this vague sense of failure works against us and prevents me from giving her what is in my power to give. . .warmth, attention, affection, tenderness, creative time together. . .and a whole host of things that can be summed up by the word "love". Our love will never be "perfect" this side of the grave. We give what we can, go to bed in peace, get up and give what we can again, and again, and again. . .with all our hearts. Edith Schaeffer put it well: "People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it". That's just the way it is on fallen planet earth.
