Pages

Monday, October 11, 2010

The door slams

This past weekend, Chance's uncle took Chance and some of his siblings with cousins to spend the night in a cabin he was watching for the weekend.

When we went to pick them up, it was apparent that a good time was had by all. The cabin was perched up at the top of a mountain in bear country. It was fenced around the perimeter of the cabin so one could feel relatively safe playing outside.(I know, I know, a little fence will not always keep a marauding bear out, but there have been few bear sightings during the cabin's life which started in 1962, and what can you do, never enter the woods because there might be a bear?).

The kids made forts out of wood and branches that were quite well built. There was a boy hut and a girl hut with windows and everything. There were trees that had been chopped down, deer wandering through camp, footballs thrown in the open spaces and popcorn kernels hurled into the open fire and popped back out as popcorn. It is a great place to be a kid.

Along with enjoying sounds of nature in the woods, the extended family got to experience the sounds of Chance. The melodic sound of doors closing in the night, that is. Chance has not done this behavior for a while at home, but apparently, he was inspired to revive his old routine at the cabin.

Before we knew Chance was deaf, he about gave us a heart attack some nights because as we lay sound asleep, blissfully dreaming, Chance would slam a door somewhere in the house when he got up in the middle of the night and scare us to death. It is a very unsettling thing to wake up to a door slamming. At first you don't know what is going on and wonder if you should hide from invaders that have entered your home and call 911. Chance, who can not hear the door slam is blissfully unaware that anything is amiss and just goes about his business. It has been a while since those of us at home have been blessed with the closing of the doors in the middle of the night, but perhaps the mountain air prompted Chance to close the doors again. My personal theory is, Chance can hear the doors but very softly and since he was in a new place, maybe a kind of scary place when you get up in the middle of the night, he closed the door for comfort. To hear something, anything in the great silence that is Chance's world at night when his implants are no longer on.

The result was, everyone knew when Chance got up to tinkle in the night.

2 comments:

Sarah and Desmond said...

One of my most favorite experiences with Savanah happens at night, when her implant is off, and she thinks because she can't hear, we can't hear. I will put her to bed, minutes later she is doing something (LOUDLY), I will walk in and give her a look, "What are you doing?" sort of look. . . and she is just puzzled beyond belief that I heard her. :)

Ammie said...

I love that he just goes about his business. unaware of the loud door slamming. haha! Maybe, the rest could have a scary time thinking it was the bear. ;)