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SOUNDS

By Peter Rosenberg

 

sundsAs I was sitting in my recliner last night, I listened to sounds emanating from throughout the house. They were not coming from the stereo surround sound system or from a CD playing on the intercom but sounded as sweet as any orchestra my wife and I ever heard.

A few minutes earlier, the humming of the garage door told me that my family had arrived. Now, from the office, I could hear my daughter listening to something on the computer for her college classes. Listening closely, there was the sound of the washer entering a spin cycle and the dryer doing its thing. Sally was in the kitchen washing the pots from dinner while the dishwasher was whirring away cleaning all the plates and glasses. Our son-in-law could be heard taking a hot shower in the guest bathroom while the barely audible sounds of a door slightly creaking from the patio bath all put a smile on my face.

Humming, spinning, flushing, creaking, water running, etc. are all sounds that most of us take for granted and that we all never give a second thought. That is, until you do not have them and that is what happened to us. The new school they are building down the street has kept causing the loss of electricity so we were told CFE was putting in larger lines to the transformer.

Apparently, when power was reconnected, there was such a strong surge of electricity, it set my computer as well as the surge protector on fire, blew out the motors to both our garage door and to our tenant’s gate, blew out the pump for the aljibes and the water filtering equipment, burned out part of the electronic chips in the washer, and completely fried some of the dimmer switches inside the house.

That all occurred eight days previously and it was only today that everything was returning to normal. We were once again in touch with the outside world. There was no more opening the huge garage door by hand every time we left and returned. The stack of dishes as well as all the pots and pans that had accumulated in the kitchen were disappearing. Clothes that had overflowed the laundry baskets many times over were finally being cleaned and hung up. There would be no more buckets of water from the pool to flush the toilets. And, the prospect of taking a hot shower before going to bed was something we all could barely wait to enjoy.

So, all these sounds, that we never pay any attention to, were now music to the ears.