Noises.

When I first rocked up in the States, though I was surrounded by all sorts of shiny things and big buildings—and even bigger SUVs—and my nose was filled with the smell of clean (or at least airport cleaning products), I think a lot of my first impressions were grounded in sounds.

 

There was, of course, the sound of airport bustle—most people speaking my own tongue, and not even in the Queen’s English. Then the sound of my mom sniffling in my ear as I finally got to hug her after so long. The sound of my actionpackers thundering to the ground when Dad tipped the trolley. (A sound he probably didn’t want to me to share about on here, hehe...)

 

Then the sound of my automatic window smoothly sliding up and down, like something straight out of the Jetsons. I think this was particularly amusing to my father, as I also remember the sound of him laughing at me. The voice of the Cubs, good ol’ Pat Hughes, describing for me, as he always does, the uniforms of the ballplayers that day—traditional white pinstripe for my dear Cubbies and brick-red jerseys on those blasted Astros. And, of course, the bumbling antics of Cubs legend Ron Santo. “Cubs baseball is on the air!”

 

My nephew giggling as he ran to hug me, “Aun’Andi!” My niece asking me again and again if I wanted to watch some penguin movie with her.

 

And, finally, the sounds muffled by the concrete as I simply laid down on our back patio, in exhaustion and in an attempt to hide from the aforementioned rugrats. I closed my eyes and imagined myself laying on our dirty floor in Lopit after a morning workout, as KP and I so often did, trying to cool off. I tried to hear Lopit in all that natural noise in my backyard—the crickets, the wind stirring up a big thunderstorm and working its way through the trees and high grass in the woods.

 

The sounds I didn’t hear—babies innumerable, crying; Grasshopper, giggling as he played with Ellen; the women gossiping in the mother tongue; cows, trouncing up the rocky path to the pins; drums, announcing a death or a dance—sounded a lot like change.