The Quest For Quiet

"He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence." - William Dean Howells

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A few years ago, I read an article in Men's Health titled "Is Life Too Loud?". Tom McGrath's piece spoke so intensely to me that I actually clipped it and squirreled it away. I often do this with recipes, home decor ideas, garden inspiration, etc... but never an actual research/informative piece. Of course, I can't find my hard copy now, but behold the power of Google. The article's main and ominous claim was that natural silent spaces were disappearing, and heading into extinction. Gordon Hempton, one of McGrath's key sources, defines silence as "no manmade noise for at least 15 minutes a day": no trains rumbling, no planes humming, no voices, no mumbles, no whispers even. In 1984, he pinpointed 21 distinct "silent" locations in his home state of Washington alone. But by 2010, that number dropped to less than a dozen, but not just in Washington - in the entire continental United States. Hempton memorialized one of these sites as the quietest place on earth, christened "One Square Inch of Silence", in Washington's Hoh Rain Forest at the Olympic National Peninsula.

Reading the article left me with a sinking feeling. I wondered, how could noise be that pervasive? Fifteen minutes is such a tiny slice of time! But it got me thinking about my surroundings. At the time, I lived in an apartment in Connecticut, adjacent to one of the prevalent, noisy thoroughfares that blurs together much of the populous mass of the New York Metropolitan area and its periphery. Our bedroom sounded like a race track much of the day, even with the windows closed, and we ran our box fans to block out the noise. At night before bed, when the road noise was predominant, I'd listen to relaxing music to lull me to sleep. Specifically Sunday nights, I tuned in to Hearts of Space (aptly subtitled "Slow Music For Fast Times"). Back in Oregon, where I grew up, a quiet space was always easy to find, just down a road or up a hill. But living in such a populated area, I had to actively seek out non-noise. Reading McGrath's article furthered my melancholy urge to return to the Pacific Northwest. I wanted to visit the "Sanctuary of Silence" before it was gone for good. 

... And then we had our first baby - a beautiful, spirited, loud little bundle named Anika. Turns out, babies aren't quiet. During Anika's early colic days, we visited the pediatrician a few times, searching for any kind of solution to the perpetual squalling. His honest response was actually quite uplifting: "babies just cry." And cry she did. My husband and I coped as best as we could. Ryan's answer was to slap on some noise-suppression ear muffs from his shop. I refused to wear them for a long time; I believed I was somehow less of a mother if I "ignored" my daughter's cries. I felt I could (and should) habituate my body's response to the constant noise and mentally transcend my natural physical responses - the quick breaths, heartbeat ramping, the spread of hormones. My body wanted to fight or to flee, but I could do neither. Any parent will tell you, hours upon hours of crying will whittle away at you. It obscures your ability to reason, to think, and to function. It was torture.

Not surprising, the word "noise" is rooted in the latin word "nausea": basically, noise can make you sick. Yet, besides hearing loss, the health effects of noise exposure don't seem widely publicized. These include but are not limited to innumerable cardiovascular disturbances and mental effects, elicited from "endocrine and automatic nervous system" reactions. The list is very long. The World Health Organization (Europe) estimates that over "one million healthy life years are lost every year" just from traffic-related noise, and just in Western Europe alone.

Health impacts occur at much quieter levels as well. Author George Foy explains (in his very interesting NPR interview): "...most people live in a Western society in a pretty noisy environment, and it's an environment that can cause physical damage on the long term, even the level of sort of loud conversation or traffic passing out in the street outside your house, long term can boost your stress levels and cause cardiac problems." Too much noise can be toxic, even noises we consider ordinary and proper.

So, what decibel level is considered "too loud"? According to Elliott Berger, an auditory research scientist, the noise threshold for health hazard is "regular exposure above 85 dBA." Certainly, I thought, a baby's cry must make that cut - and it does, averaging between 110 and 130 dB. Here's some familiar noises for comparison:

Vacuum cleaner - 80 dB
Lawn mower - 90 dB
Electric drill - 95 dB
Blender - 100 dB
Chain saw - 110 dB

Also clocking in at 130 dB are air raids and jack hammers. No wonder I felt as if I were losing my mind! 

I also measured a few of my own common situations with a free decibel meter app:

The coffee shop - 70 dB
"Some Nights" in my car, at "soft-rock-out" level - 85 dB
Kaden crying in the car because his coat was crooked - 95 dB (to be fair, this included Anika's logically scream in response of "Stop that noise!")
Our bedroom at night - 35 dB

I am lucky in that I live in a location with little noise intrusion. I don't live in a metropolis, nor near an airport, train station, or freeway. I don't work in construction, in a factory or even a bustling office. But our home, in the proverbial country, is definitely not "silent." I still hear cars, planes overhead, and sometimes a train at night, as the sound bounces off the hills. If what Berger says is real about silence, it's simply not feasible, impossible really, to find it in its purest form. 

Conversely, too much silence unnerves as well. A decibel level of 35 feels as quiet as I'd like to go. Lying in bed at night, I sometimes feel as if I can hear everything, especially my breath and my heart, even the undulating rhythm as the beat moves from my heart to my head/ears. Sometimes, the quiet around me cloisters like a fog and the more I hear, the more I listen, and the more I hear. Maybe this is because the sounds of the refrigerator or the furnace fan are constants rather than variables. At least in nature, the players are never the same and its voice is metamorphic. Like Berger writes, it is "evanescent - it ceases to exist even as it is produced." My house, on the other hand, makes a never-ending, omnipresent, quasi-maddening hum. With a window open, at least I can hear the rain, the wind, the owls, the distance... 

I sound crazy, if poetic. But silence really can drive you mad. I found an article about the world's quietest room, a sound-proof (anechoic) chamber that does just this. It clocks in at a numbing -9 dB and is so quiet, the only audible sounds come from your own body's inner workings. First you'll hear its more blatant functions: heart pumping, lungs expanding, compressing. Eventually, you'll hear the mechanics of your own ears, the humming sound of the tinnitus that we all have. The longest anyone has spent in this room is 45 minutes. I guess if I can't hike to the middle of the Olympic National Forest, I could hop a plane to Minnesota. Is a heartbeat considered a "man-made" noise?

Realistically, no one can fully evade noise. There will always be a garbage truck booming, a siren wailing, a washing machine churning away. And as a parent, I can't escape the loud sibling disputes over the one silver superhero cape or midnight wails for lost blue bunnies (who are always right by the bed, by the way). Noise is an unavoidable byproduct of living. And with noise, comes unavoidable stress. Yet, within this lies some kind of reassurance, right? That we are moving, we are producing, we are living, and all is as it should be; this somehow makes it bearable. But silence is just not the usual anymore. You have to mine for it.

So, here's what works for me, as a mom: 

1. Send the perpetrators outside. Yes, in the rain. More often in the sun. Less often in the snow, and/or thunder storms, hurricanes, and other such natural disasters. Put a coat on them. Give them some boots, gloves, insulated blankets, etc... They'll be fine. 

2. Go outside yourself. Open the door, latch it behind you, and listen, even if just for a few minutes. Even if all you get to hear is other noise. Switch it up a bit. Bonus points for bird calls, raindrops, rustling leaves, and all things non-mechanical.

3. Put on your earmuffs. Well, in my case, it's noise-cancelling head phones with most excellent music pumping through them. I use this technique at crucial moments, when the kids are tearing around the house in their latest game of superheroes, bad guys vs. unicorns, hide and seek on steroids, etc... You'd think it'd be Beethoven, or folk guitar, or Gregorian chants that I'm listening to. But of course I like to beat it up with a little pop musik. Heavy rotation lately include this song and this song. Because really, there's no sitting quiet in the middle of a maelstrom. I turn up my tunes and take the opportunity to do the dishes, tidy up toys, vacuum, all while keeping a close eye on my roving kids.

4. Stay up late. I do this a little too often. It's hard to pull away from that high-quality quiet produced only when the kids are sleeping. I do love to sleep, but I gather a peace of mind during those late-night hours that push me through many a blurry-eyed next day.

5. Get up early. As a night owl, I struggle with this. But when I can manage it, I get some of my best work done before the world wakes. It's a great way to start the day - well-rested, re-centered, and ready for the eminent onslaught.

6. Don't bellow "BE QUIET!" across the house. I think I do this every day, and it never works. I like to put a hand on a shoulder and explain it's time to be quiet. When this inevitably fails, see Number 3.

7. Recognize your winks of quiet and be present in them. Transform them into your kairos moments. Because so often moments are all you'll get.

It turns out, shortly after I started writing this post, my entire family fell ill with a week long flu. We spent most of the week in relative quiet (I mean, besides the hacking coughs). We rotated between lounging glaze-eyed on the couch and short toy sessions. Relatively speaking, this week has been one of the calmest I've had in a long time. I guess that's the silver lining. Especially in my house, quiet comes in cycles. I'll just wait until that rare moment comes round again to grab it, and enjoy.