Background Noise
By Nancy Browne
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
My father died when I was twelve, some sixty years ago and, yet he lives here on this page in short-form memory.
My father was the background noise in my young life. The high volume, off-key sounds of songs that he constantly bellowed out. The slamming of a truck door, the engine revving, gravel spitting under wheels, a blaring horn. After work, he was the sound of thick, heavy boots, and an ear-piercing whistle.
At dinner, he was tastelessly loud and boastful, snapping caps off of brown bottles and swearing if they gave him trouble. He was noisy with his fork and knife, cling/clang like the high-pitch vibration of the music playing in the background. His left leg would bounce to the melody of sounds making a repeating tune to the kitchen tile. Humming between mouthfuls, he’d drink the beer in gulps.
By bedtime his voice was loud and strong with over-turns of laughter. He seemed to always be happy, yet one could judge him by the look on his face. Happiness could fade fast, if his mood changed, a noisy one-sided voice, with long sighs and heavy breath that would surround the air. It would become as thick as a brick. A crash, a clank or a boom to follow.
This was my father.
The prancing bully of a man with too many hearty sips, a mood tossed in a single swallow, palms smacking a table, or the fridge door, with muscles moving in perfect stride. The ache of a voice that echoes, with feet that staggers and saunters among slammed doors.
A ripple or a sway or even a high pitch shout of anger, or laughter, with lips in parody of happiness and fun, or a mouth solemnly full of profanities. Always, it was the background noise; so symbolically fearful or sweet or so ragingly sad. The master of empty talk, and dissonant notes that had such a simple meaning; Hear me! Background noise, peak decibels.
Never one to openly display feelings, but he was always visibly heard.
Like the scratchy records he played, and the high notes he tried to mimic, and failed miserably to accomplish; yet shouting out words was his style and personality. This is what he left me, the thundering, uproarious bewilderment of sound. Why did noise seem larger than life?
When I think of my father, even today, from the click of his tongue, to the tap of his fingers, to the stomp of his foot, and his singing, shouting voice, he’s always been the background noise of my life.
How deeply personal noise and sound becomes when you know it by heart.
Nancy Browne has been writing poetry for over six decades. She also writes short stories and is currently working on a novel. Her work has appeared in the online Literary Magazine (Funny in Five Hundred) 2016, and was the winner of the non-fiction category in the Joy of the Pen in 2022. Nancy writes from Yarmouth, Maine.
