The day is brilliant blue and the sun has yet to reach its pea. It is not still in the great outdoors, however. The birds that occupy the many trees in the hidden backyards of Harlem create such a cacophony you soon learn to tune them out. Sometimes the leaves rustle as the squirrels search for nuts or do their little courtship dances. And ever so often the faint noises of honking horns and sirens drift back from the street. It is a rare silence in New York that makes me sit beneath the tree and dream. Here there are no troubles, no street vendors, no New York State of mind. What I feel is a slight breeze, what I see is a cloudless sky. And what I hear are wind chimes.
There are two sets nestled in the branches of the tree that is a residence for birds and squirrels and the creator of shade for me. Both were birthday presents for me from my mother and my brother. This was not on any wish list I ever created. Wind chimes as a gift never crossed my mind in a city that creates its own unique and usually loud symphony. They would be just one more thing to add to the continuous noise. When they arrived days a apart I thought my family had to be kidding. Couldn’t they consult each other before sending the gifts? I could have used a few plants or some perfume but these things? Whats a New York girl supposed to do with two sets of wind chimes?
Since I wouldn’t dream of giving away any gifts from family or friends no matter how inappropriate for someone with ‘diva’ in her email address, they sat for two months in their tidy boxes taking up space that is always valuable in New York. I considered putting them in my bedroom as decoration, and to annoy my husband who snores louder than the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra. A director friend once had several sets of perfectly pitched wind chimes in the windows of his loft. On days when he wanted to open the windows he let in the air and the noise of the city was soon drowned out by the chimes singing. They could have been placed in the entrance to our house, attached to something that pulled them to attention when someone came in. A sort of impromptu alarm. But that required some skill in putting the whole idea into play and no one had time to do it. That’s also something very New York, you never have enough quiet, space or time.
I waited out the rains that came with the beginning of summer and while sitting on the deck one Sunday, a few hours before the next storm I decidedto do the selfish thing and put the damn chimes in the tree. I say selfish because my bedroom is in the front of the house and I would be privy to the loud chiming when the wind blows or when the squirrels get happy and start racing in the tree limbs. My nieghbors had chimes in their yard but they had stopped ringing long ago. A guy two houses down has a fountain that runs day and night. You get the dogs to barking, a few cats in heat and a drunk or two having a verbal fight and who cares if there are a few chimes underscoring the city’s theme of as many different sounds as possible.
The chimes were louder than I thought and embarrassed, I wanted to take them down. I was trying to be a New Yorker and not be noticed at all and especially for my annoying chimes. But as they danced in the wind and I listened to them I adjusted to what they gave me. The set from my mother rings prettier than my brother’s. Its bursts of music are shorter and sweeter. The one from my brother has longer sharper tones. Maybe its because he’s a drummer with a blues band. Or maybe its just because the chimes are as different as my mother and brother. She plays the piano so they are both musical. In essence the chimes bring their sounds to me.
I stopped worrying about the neighbors, or my daughter whose bedroom is a above them and the tenant whose bedroom is below. They confessed they liked the sound. The neighbor whose chimes no longer play came out and told me how much she was enjoying mine and missing hers (that means she will probably buy some new ones). The man with the fountain can’t hear them but now when they ring I can’t hear the endless running water. And on days like this when all is right in God’s world- from where I rest in my small backyard under a big tree-every morsel of sweet music makes life bearable.
There is silence in the chimes. I can’t hear outside of the gentle metallic ringing. I close my eyes and can be anywhere I want to be. There is no worrying about being late for work, the crowded subway, the sweaty people annoyed with each other and the hot pavement. There is just wind and sky and a blank breeze that brings the angelic tones to me. I am pleasantly reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan and my favorite monologue from the play that contains the line ”If only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voice floating to me on the wind.”
There is no New York, or Washington or Atlanta as I sit in the silence of the chimes. I realize now what I didn’t when I got these gifts that I considered sinister. There will always be music in my soul and sometimes it hides because the city gets too loud. Without putting too much thought to it my mother and brother gave me something to bring the happiest noises to the surface. And when the wind hits the trees I am at peace in the not so still world and singing to an inner tune that comes floating to me.
