Noises in the night

As a young child I lived in a rural area of Nova Scotia. My bedroom window captured the sounds of a nearby brook and occasionally a roaring ocean depending on the direction of the wind and ferocity of the storm. This soundscape was rarely interrupted by manmade noises, the road in front of our house was not heavily used although trucks were fairly common; hauling supplies and goods to the next village down the road.

There were few noises in the night to keep me on edge and awake with the exception of a Mickey Mouse watch. I received it for Christmas when I was about six and that watch ticked so viciously that I had to smother Mickey in blankets and pillows to get any peace. Luckily, I’m one of those people who have an odd effect on watches; they tend to die within months of being strapped to my wrist. Mickey quickly went the way of most other watches I have owned and drowned silently in the toy box.

At the age of nine, I left my babbling brook and moved to a bigger community, and then a bigger community and finally I moved to Vancouver- one of the biggest cities in Canada. Those stages of moving to ever expanding noise environments was effective in helping me block out each addition to the nighttime soundscape.

While I found little difficulty in blocking out the sound of rushing traffic and sirens, there have always been sounds, far less intrusive, that jolt me out of sleep. The first sound I reacted to was the sound of my cat Toodie coughing up a furball. This sound was always disturbing, making me fear for Toodie’s life. I’d jump out of bed as soon as I heard him start to choke and pat his marmalade coat until he stopped.

My sister and I slept in the same room for a time, and for some reason, her sleep was never impacted by this terrifying sound. As it turned out, not much could wake her up, take fire alarms for example; no effect.

And that fact became a very tangible difficulty when my family moved to Vancouver. The first night in our new apartment building-with boxes piled half-opened all over the floor, and no beds yet to be sleeping in—the fire alarm went off. At first my mother and I tried to figure out if this was real, was there a fire the first night in our new home; a home that had taken us weeks to find, and while we were finding it, we had been living in a tent. Surely not. A dash out to the balcony proved beyond a doubt that the alarm was real—two balconies over from ours flames and sparks were shooting down the side of the building.

We got my sister up, found Toodie and headed outside. It was a long night, but we got to meet our new neighbours, the building was habitable except for two units and we got to go back to our new home and finish unpacking.

Mickey Mouse watch, cat choking and fire alarms—my list of inescapable sounds.

Then I became a parent and hardly ever slept. Every sound the baby made woke me up. Or no sound, that was worse. Sleep inhabited a separate dimension from the one I lived in for at least five years. And after that, a full night’s sleep, that didn’t happen for another five years. And my parental radar has never diminished, any unusual sound in the night, I wake up.

Then there is this house, it’s old and old houses have lots of character including their own chorus of creaks, bumps, and rattles. Because my house is like my baby, I can’t sleep through all its many nighttime songs. Every bump is a drainpipe falling off, every rattle a loose window about to succumb to gravity, creaks are unwanted animals in the attic. The cacophony of sound is terrifying. I can’t block it out through sheer force of will, so I listen to talk radio all night—it’s the only kind of background noise that keeps the disturbances at bay.

Sometimes this doesn’t work, if the program suddenly samples a clip of music, I am apt to wake up. If loud alarms are part of the show, I will definitely wake up; but usually this method of sleep therapy works well for me.

Four o’clock this morning I heard a small voice call out, ‘Mom, can you help me?’ Aroused from sleep I quickly answered, “I’ll be right there.” I got up and made my way to my younger daughter’s closed bedroom door, opened it and saw a sleeping child. There was no movement, not even the squeaking of her door made an impact. Puzzled I went back to bed and caught a few snippets of the conversation currently playing on the radio. It became clear that the call for help had been broadcast on the BBC, not from down the hall.

My kids are older now, in the teen and almost teen years, and nighttime crises are few and far between. But it seems I will forever be locked in that space where a nighttime call for mom, is always a wake-up call.

Mickey Mouse watch, cat choking, fire alarms, and cries for mom—inescapable sounds.