I was sitting at the
computer, working on something, when I heard a repeated, low noise.
It was almost felt as a deep vibration as much as it was heard as a
sound.
It felt like it was
coming from beneath the floor, from the basement. My work desk
is on top of the laundry area, but I wasn’t doing any wash; so
it couldn’t be the spin cycle going out of balance, and there
was nothing downstairs besides laundry and storage.
The sound
repeated, not perfectly regular, maybe half a dozen times. Then it
stopped again.
“Honey, what’s that noise?”
I called towards the living room. Since the kitchen sits in
between, trying to have such a conversation is problematic. I
swear we had better hearing in the old house.
I know he’s lost
some hearing, but I never felt deaf until we moved here. Higher
ceilings, different angles between the rooms and the placement of
their doors, not to mention street noise, has made it difficult here,
so I raised my voice louder and asked again.
“What
noise?” he asked.
“There it is a third
time, a deep, big sound that repeats and stops. I think it’s
coming from your direction. Didn‘t you hear it?”
By this time I’m walking into the front room.
He didn’t
hear any noise. I couldn’t hear it in the living room
either, which surprised me, but because I was listening for it I
could sense a low, indistinct rumble. He now caught it,
only because I was calling it to his attention and he stopped what he
was doing and listened. It was subtle — until I opened
the front door and stepped out onto the stoop.
One block up
the side street and then kitty-corner across the intersection,
workers were breaking up concrete, drilling to set posts for the
perimeter of a new medical clinic. The noise was loud and definite,
stepping outside. It was the work of jackhammers, after all.
The living room was the
closest point to the source of the noise, at least in logical
distance, yet that’s not where it could be heard. Our walls
were a barrier. The vibrations were coming through the ground and the
emptier downstairs and I could hear it much more, from below, in the
back room. It was weird.
At least I was able to solve
the mystery, and nothing dreadful was happening that I needed to
worry about. That stage of construction only lasted a couple of
days, and then other noises from the building process didn’t
carry as much. Eventually it was all done.
I remember
when my younger son, who was about eleven, was going up into the
attic to find something from his sister’s room, and heard
voices upstairs, adult male voices, and he freaked out. (We
weren’t home.) He bolted across the street for a
neighbor, who kept him there and called the police to come check it
out.
A police officer came and walked through the empty house
(I was mortified to learn) and gave the all clear. What had my
son heard?
They were putting a new
roof on a house on the next block behind us, and the workmen’s
voices carried across the busy street, over the house behind us with
its shorter roof height, and into our open window on the attic level
at the rear, where he thought he heard strangers inside our home.
We didn’t hear
the traffic on that street, but the noise higher off the ground came
through. Sound waves rebound and distort in funny ways
sometimes.
Emotional waves do
funny things too. One of the most important mother education
lessons I ever had in Relief Society was about how to identify
reasons behind problem behaviors.
If a child is
misbehaving in the same way under the same circumstance, he or she is
pushing the boundaries linked to a specific issue. But if behaviors
are intense and sudden, and erupt without clear logical connection to
the issue at hand, seeming to come without rhyme or reason, it means
that some need of theirs is not being met.
Being only children,
they don’t know how to express that, or maybe even how to
define it.
They don’t tell us that part of the
parenthood job description is super-sleuth. Maybe a child just
needs more attention. Negative attention beats lack of
attention in their book. We can figure out how to offer more
positive attention, cuddle time with a story, a favorite game to play
together, just some undistracted listening attention, that’s
usually not too hard to understand.
Maybe they’re
frightened about something, and acting out — or withdrawing.
Maybe they’re over-wound and need quiet time, or tired, or
hungry. My mother used to say that if the kids are squabbling,
look at the clock. She said sometimes the best answer to
clamors of grief and complaint, one child versus another, is, “I’m
hungry too; let’s go have lunch.”
Those are
fairly simple things to figure out and address. What about the
ones that aren’t so obvious? Because it isn’t just
kids who act out because of unmet needs; grownups do it too.
It’s human nature. It’s a terrible truth to
discover, that being an adult doesn’t mean that you have all
the magic answers to life.
Learning from a class or lesson
somewhere that a lot of anger is really fear was an epiphany for me.
I could look at myself and ask, when I was losing my grip, what are
you afraid of? When I was pulling in, starting a downwards
spiral in my head, what’s behind this? What are you actually
reacting to? Because it usually wasn’t the present
moment.
Often the biggest issue was defining what the button
was that had been pushed. Oh, yes, there are things that push
our buttons.
Your kids are fighting — again — and
you’re afraid that you must be a bad parent, and they’ll
never learn how to be kind to each other. No, it doesn’t
mean you’re a failure as a parent, it means that you need to
keep working on enforcing the rules and helping them understand the
principles behind the rules, because their internalization of
principles is the most important part.
That’s what will
last, but it doesn’t come instantly.
Maybe you go into
a tailspin, internally, because of an offhand comment by someone who
didn’t mean anything by it; objectively you might concede that
they didn’t, but you’re still affected. If you can
recognize that it brought up something from the past, nothing more,
but it’s not actually related to anything present and doesn’t
matter, then you can let it go and come back to yourself.
I
think some of the wisdom that comes with age is learning what things
matter, and what things don’t. The small stuff doesn’t
loom so large any more. A big part of getting there is learning
how to separate what you need to work on and what is just pushing on
old buttons that deserve to be disconnected.
Part of
divine tutelage is being led by the Spirit to distinguish what does
matter. We do all have things to work on and areas where we
need to improve. We’re often given callings, after all,
that feel beyond us when they come.
The old joke is that
once you actually know how to serve in a calling, that’s when
you get released. Eternal progression means continuing growth,
which equals both service and struggles. But there is joy, and
light, along the way.
But the buttons Satan pushes are trying
to make us feel that we’re failures, that we’re unworthy,
that if others knew our particular imperfections they would shun us,
or that we don’t deserve love, help, joy, or anything good.
Our Heavenly Father knows us more completely than anyone else
ever can. He knows our gifts, our difficulties, and he knows
our hearts. He knows amazing things that we can’t
remember about ourselves, but He will draw them out. His love
is perfect and eternal, and individual. It’s amazing.
Put your hand in His, and don’t let anything displace
His care. His is the voice that speaks truth.
Marian J. Stoddard was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in its Maryland suburbs. Her
father grew up in Carson City, Nevada, and her mother in Salt Lake City, so she was always
partly a Westerner at heart, and she ended up raising her family in Washington State. Her family
took road trips all over the United States and Canada, so there were lots of adventures.
The adventures of music, literature, and art were also valued and pursued. Playing tourist always
included the local museums as well as historical sites and places of natural beauty. Discussions
at home, around the dinner table or working in the kitchen, could cover politics, philosophy, or
poetry, with the perspective of the gospel underlying all. Words and ideas, and testimony and
service, were the family currency.
Marian graduated from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, and attended the
University of Utah as the recipient of the Ralph Hardy Memorial Scholarship, where she was
graduated with honors, receiving a B.A. in English. She also met the love of her life, a law
student, three weeks after her arrival; she jokes that she had to marry him because her mother
always wanted a tenor in the family. (She sings second soprano.) They were married two years
later and have six children and six grandchildren (so far). She treasures her family, her friends,
and her opportunities to serve.
Visit Marian at her blog, greaterthansparrows. You can contact her at
bloggermarian@gmail.com.
Marian and her husband live in Tacoma, Washington. Together they teach those who are
preparing to go to the temple for the first time, and she also teaches a Stake Relief Society
Institute class.