SOUNDS OF MORNING

Old houses, especially three-story colonial New England ones, like the kind my family lives in, are not unlike elderly people. They make unusual sounds, noises really. Their aging timbers and rafters often creak and moan like arthritic joints when the weather turns sour. The water flowing through their rusting and partially blocked lead pipes doesn't stream along as fluently as it once did when they were bright shiny new, and hadn't suffered the insult caused by hundreds of thousands of gallons of mineral-laden hard water that over the years, drop by drop, has narrowed their once smooth interiors--like aging, hardening arteries narrowed by cholesterol plaque build-up. And like wheezing and coughing lungs made spongy from years of abuse, the large spidery conduits leading from the massive furnace in the basement can no longer deliver their warm air efficiently; there is always a choking hoarseness or high-pitched whine that must precede the warmth of their smoky breath.

But similarly, like my grandmother and grandfather who live with us during the summer, old houses are rich with experience and wisdom, if only we take the time to listen to their sounds. Their noises.

Take now, for instance. It is a Saturday morning in early October. I am lying in my bed, listening. It is a passive activity I undertake every morning, and I have become so attuned, so in sympathy with the nearly imperceptible sounds that surround me, I don't need to look at the red LED face of my radio alarm clock nor check the calendar to know the precise time of day (it's now a little before 8 am) or what day it must be. The barely audible--but quite distinct pulsing rhythms that beat throughout the house almost psychically--like the telltale heart in Poe's story--provide for me, with unerring accuracy, more information than what most people would care to know. The sounds of morning foretell the mood of the day. They also tell me what secret events have transpired during the brief history of the night that has just silently crawled under her white bed sheet of dawn to slumber, as day rises to the helm to steer the ship of time safely through the next watch.

Such sensitivity, such acute awareness of one's immediate environment, does not, however, come about easily. To hear, let alone understand the nearly imperceptible utterances of stillness, requires much practice. And in this area I am indeed blessed, for because of my situation I have had the greatest opportunity to practice my craft. Time for me is both my ally and my enemy.

My bedroom is on the second floor of our house and faces north. If you were to enter it, I'm sure you'd be quick to discover that it is unlike the room of most fifteen year old boys. No, not that it is any more tidy than what you'd expect to see. Quite the opposite! It is more cluttered.

In addition to my bed, dresser, desk and chair, posters of cars and rock stars occupying nearly every square inch of wall, a stereo tape and CD player, an ever-growing heap of dirty clothes: jeans, socks, underwear, t-shirts and sweatshirts-all of which are quite ordinary finds in any teenager's room; you couldn't help but wonder about the small round top dining table that stands by the window, or the green slate board that has now been rolled-to conserve space-behind the door, or the exercise machine that takes up too much space at the foot of my bed, or the sprawling array of medicine bottles that seem to challenge the integrity of the white parson's table upon which they weigh heavily.

But most of all you would question--and rightly so--the purpose for the one-foot-square red box that hangs above the head of my bed. I call it my silent sentinel. In reality it contains a complex network of wires, transmitters, diodes, microcomputer chips and other hardware whose sole function is to relay a continuous stream of data to the medical center eight miles away, the condition of my deteriorating heart.

My room, then, is not so much a bedroom as it is my domain. I have not left its protective bosom in over three years...except, of course, to go into the bathroom that separates my seventeen year old brother Josh's room from my own.

The sounds of Josh's yet deep sleep echo through the plaster wall that divides us. I know it will yet be awhile before my ears are entertained by the low-pitched thundering tympani of Josh's Nike-clad athletic feet pounding and beating their staccato cadence down the carpeted stairs. Often, I wonder as I lie here, if Hector Berlioz was not somehow given some foretaste, some precognition of my brother's morning sounds? Surely the composer must have heard their syncopated measure while composing his Symphonie Fantastique!

Josh's raspy, steam locomotive sounds inform me he didn't get in until very late last night. Ordinarily by 7:30 on Saturday mornings he's up and out of his room, downstairs pawing through the kitchen cabinet looking for a box of cereal that suits his fancy, or, if he's really ambitious, frying eggs and bacon. Oh, it's not that my brother doesn't like sleeping-in...it's just that he likes getting out of the house before our father wakes-up even more! Dad always has some unfinished or new project awaiting Josh that is sure to make him late for--or miss entirely, depending on the season: shooting baskets with his friends; varsity swim practice; being the first to leave skate tracks on the virgin surface of the frozen pond; or heading off into the woods alone, rubber boots, tackle box and fly rod in hand, where he'll spend most of the day idly wading through the slippery rocky bottom of Furnace Brook, half-heartedly hoping to snag a rainbow trout. His real concentration, though, will not be on angling; he'll be trying to figure out why his current girlfriend wouldn't let him go "just a little further" the night before. Josh won't admit it, but I'm pretty sure he's still a virgin.

Two doors down and on the other side of the hall is where my little sister Jennifer, cuddled between her pink sheets and rose comforter slumbers silently, waiting patiently and innocently for the warmth, light, excitement, and promising discoveries of the new day to tenderly beckon her to new life, as does the spring sun to the still-dormant, fragile fledgling monarch butterfly.

And indeed my little sister is as beautiful, as sweet, as tender, and as docile as any butterfly God has ever created. No morning sounds from her room yet reach my ears. But very shortly I will hear her door squeak open and be treated to the muted serenade of her fuzzy-pink-rabbit-slippered footfalls as they approach my bedroom door. Her knock will be subdued and timid, as though I were the one being disturbed. But that is not the case at all.

"Tyler? Tyler?" I will hear her sweet buttercup voice whisper. Then after cracking my door by the narrowest slit imaginable: "What would you like me to make you for breakfast?"

"The usual," I will answer.

"Are you sure? It's Saturday, I have time to make you something more than toast with peanut butter and orange jam."

"No, that's all I want. Thank you, Jenny." With those words, we will complete scene one of our Saturday morning ritual--until fifteen minutes later when she serves me; then scene two will be re-enacted.

Farther down the hall also facing north, is where my mom and dad sleep. Sometimes, particularly in the summer when the windows are open and the air is humid, it's difficult for me to detect any morning sounds emanating from their room. Hearing and sorting out their sounds is also made more difficult because the guestroom where Grandma and Grandpa sleep is situated immediately to my right. This morning, though, the October air is fresh, vibrant and brisk. If I try hard enough--and I'm doing that now--I can barely pleasure my ears with my parents' morning waking sounds. They are sounds of love. I cannot so much hear as I can feel the love they share. For theirs is a special room. A room where Joshua, Jennifer and myself were conceived. It is the room where our mother, Jessica, and our father, Jared, became one, united forever in the eyes of God.

Yes, I hear those sounds too. And yes, I also hear, and have heard every day of my life the most beautiful sound in the English language: the soft, deliciously pure, soft "J" sound; the musical note which God Himself used to name His only son. But yet, in this world I have been denied such tribute. My name, Tyler, is not at as romantically musical like my parents' names nor my brother's or sister's.

But that's okay. I was created to be different. What my earthly parents--for whatever reason--chose to deny me; my Heavenly Parent, God, has more than blessed and compensated me.

For, you see, besides hearing the subtle sounds of morning, here in my bedroom, God has provided for me another sound, a splendid chorus. A chorus of extraordinary auditory perception where I need not have to fight my way through the constant disruption, the everyday, every night continual insult upon my ears of the clicking of my two synthetic plastic heart valves.

Above and beyond them I can hear in resounding glory, a magnificent choir of angelic hosts, singing gleefully, adoringly, jubilantly, an anthem of praise. It is a majestic, heavenly choir in which I, too, shall very soon play a part.