Just some things I forgot when I was at the grocery store

Sometimes, before I’ve had any coffee, when the world is still made of glass, I will walk downstairs into that thick silence and sit in the rocking chair. I do not pour myself a bowl of cereal, or flip open the computer. Instead, I listen to all the sounds that are not being made. You can feel the house nearly bursting with the effort of silence. Sooner or later a floorboard will creak and someone will be yelling underneath her door that she is, as always come  morning, “very very hungry.”

Months before we bought this house my wife said she thought it was haunted. We’d visited on the first day of our house search, admired the pergo flooring and basement bar. But surely, it couldn’t be ours, it was haunted. I could not sleep last night, listening to the wind and then the rain. I kept wondering if the basement was flooding as the rain thrummed its fingers on the roof. I went downstairs and got a drink at the bar in our basement. It’s being manned right now by the ghost of my grandfather. He makes me whiskey high balls, and we talk about the weather, the damn mosquitoes, and whatever sport is in season. Of course this house is haunted. We live here now.

I have learned in time that sharing walls with someone else is not always a nuisance. After midnight, when I am nearing sleep, I hear faint voices coming through the walls, slowly rising, like the movement in a piece of classical music that I cannot name because I am uncultured and musically challenged. But instead of queuing violins and horn sections to really kick it into high gear, I hear the snatches of these two people talking to each other like an Edward Albee play. Sooner or later a door slams, and I sink down further into the couch, curling my shoulders and hugging a pillow, comfortable in the knowledge that I am not the only one who finds it hard sometimes to withhold cruelty.

And still other mornings, curtains bisected by light, as I slip from dream to waking, I’ll hear faint cries that are undoubtedly coming from the rooms of my children. And yet, I’ll roll back over and close my eyes, it is always too early to get up, and I am certain that is just the neighbors, up early, arguing again. We see them later, talking over home improvements. Everything is fine now. It almost always is. That’s what mornings and death are for, forgetting.