The Soundscape

"One more cardinal, and I win," said Jess as he and Lizzie bird watched from the window.

"Why is a cardinal worth 10 points and a bald eagle only worth 5 points -aren't they on the endangered list?" Lizzie asked. At age 6, Lizzie had already become quite the environmentalist.

Jess, age 10, had become a spiritualist. "Because a cardinal is actually a heart with wings. It's a message from beyond - someone who loves you who wants to say hi and remind you that you will be ok. A bald eagle is rare, but a cardinal is…."

"Mommy," she said. They both smiled.

Jess, Lizzie, and their mother, Abigail, moved to the Catskill Mountains from New York City one year earlier. Abbey wanted a more tranquil life in the country for her kids - more peaceful like where she grew up in Georgia.

As a sound therapist, she knew all too well the underlying stress caused on the body by layers of ambient sound.

In the 90's she'd go to concerts in the city; Roseland, The Limelight, and Webster Hall were indoor playgrounds for college kids who loved to dance, drink and listen to live music for hours on end.

After her fourth concert in a week, the ringing started. At first, Abbey hung back at the bar or in the back row, thinking she was too close to the stage speakers. Drunk and in desperation for relief, one night, she got crafty by disintegrating a tampon and sticking the cotton in her ears - "some protection was better than none," she giggled.

But the ringing got worse.

On her commute to work, she would pass jackhammering on construction sites and guessed that was the cause, but the ringing got worse.

Abbey couldn't fall asleep at night either. She blamed it on the constant reverse beeping of the garbage carters outside her basement apartment that would come throughout the night to empty the cans from the bars and restaurants on her street. After weeks without sleep, coworkers began to comment on her pale skin and tired eyes.

Finally, Abbey started postponing plans with her friends to see shows and started taking a different path to work along the park's perimeter. She asked her boss if she could move into the windowless cubicle away from the bullpen of coworker's phone conversations.

Wearing earplugs 24/7 was annoying, but it was the only thing that took the edge off, and since she didn't have health insurance to get examined, earplugs were the cheapest solution.

And then, one day, the ringing stopped.

It was only when layer upon layer upon layer of her routine soundscape was stripped away that she finally realized the toll that her life's soundtrack was taking on her - mentally and physically.

Her sleep, diet, energy, skin, hair, and nails were all affected by the accumulative stress of an unconscious unrelenting infiltrating aural assault. Even her moods, weight, and memory suffered.

Her body was saying "no!" and all Abbey had to do was be still enough to hear it.

She listened so hard that she went back to school for her associate's degree to help make other's lives better through sound therapy.

Ten years later, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and learned that the sheath around her nerve endings had degenerated, she needed to protect what was left.

Her doctor told her sound, hot, cold, and anything extreme would affect her physically and significantly more than the average person. She would just need to learn to manage it to reduce the stress on her body.

When people asked her why she was moving to the Catskills, she would say to "save myelin" - referring to the name of the sheath that insulates nerves. With her southern accent, though, most people heard "to save MY LAND" and figured she was an environmental activist. For Abbey, that wouldn't be far from the truth.

They called it their "sound escape" or "soundscape" for short. Jess and Lizzie welcomed the move and looked forward to taking hikes in the woods and creating vegetable gardens together. Abbey wanted to build a chicken coop, install solar panels, start a beehive and learn how to ice skate once the pond down the road froze over. As a southern girl, ice skating wasn't something you could get a Girl Scout badge for, and she couldn't afford lessons at the rink in the city.

"Watch this, Mom!" screamed Jess as he tried to skate on one leg across the pond. Abbey and Lizzie cheered him on as he got better and better. The day was perfect but after hours of trying to sit spin herself, Abbey felt frostbitten and suggested the kids head back up the hill to the house. She hobbled behind them.

A few mugs of hot cocoa and a couple of rounds of Boggle by the fire in their cozy winter jammies was pure bliss but Abbey decided it was time to have a serious talk with the kids before bed. She was so stiff she could barely move, but she knew she had to stop procrastinating and putting it off.

She explained her MS, her slow decline, and the future for her and them if something happened. She insisted they would always be safe because Aunt Sammy would come and live with them. She described a golden cord that would always tether them and keep them connected between worlds.

The kids asked a few questions, but neither of them seemed phased. They felt heard. Abbey had created the peaceful haven she dreamed about for them to thrive in - a place where they could learn to appreciate the land, the wildlife, and their silent soundscape. They felt loved.

Lizzie started singing "Circle of Life" from the Lion King, and Jess asked if Abbey would "send signals from the other side" - things that would make them smile?

This time her body said "yes!" in the stillness.