I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s amazing how effectively Lina can communicate her preferences without words. But then again, so can the rest of us. The holiday season has given her new opportunities to use her communication skills.
Example 1 (me): Turns on Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving, indicating eagerness to begin weeks of festive listening. Bobs head and smiles, demonstrating appreciation for catchy melodies, buckets of jingle bells, and the mandatory clip-clop sound effects in any song about a sleigh.
Example 2 (Lina): Shakes head and furrows brow at my choice in music, expressing disagreement. Points urgently towards the speaker, sharing source of distress.
And of course, absent immediate cessation of sound, she has no problem giving a few warning cries.
But that’s fair, right? She told me very clearly and appropriately that she did not share my love of holiday tunes. And I got it. I turned off the music, a little regretfully but without surprise.
Although Lina used to love music of all kinds, lately she’s been showing more and more sensitivity to various sounds. Whether it’s a glugging coffee maker, a gurgling pipe, or a cheery Christmas tune, for reasons we don’t fully understand (but try our best to), she’s become extremely aware and often upset by their existence. Most of the time we can accommodate her without too much trouble. We started programming the coffee maker to brew before we come downstairs. We shut off the water filter making the noise in the pipes. And I (albeit reluctantly) have not played Christmas music (or any music) while Lina is around.
Honestly I’m not sure if the sound bothers her ears or if she’s simply too sophisticated for Jingle Bells. “Ugh, this peasant trash AGAIN?” Maybe I have lowbrow tastes and she’s longing to introduce me to some underground music scene she discovered amongst the toddler set. Something atonal, with a completely new take on maracas.
Part of me is sad about this. I have strong memories of certain Christmas music during certain periods of my life. Growing up, my parents had a legit vinyl record of Bing Crosby melodies they would spin while we opened presents by the tree. (They weren’t hipsters, just hold-outs in the tech world.) In college, Love Actually was released and every laptop played Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” on repeat while we crammed for winter finals. Every season, I want my Bing. I want my Mariah. I want my schmaltz.
Lina, on the other hand: a big fan of silent nights. In fact, over time, Lina has slowly expressed a strong preference for a very quiet bedroom. Her white noise machine, used every night since she came home from the hospital as a wee tiny baby, suddenly began to bother her. Her ceiling fan and its faint hum, fired up every evening in our humid Texas weather, became unwelcome. It also bears mention that she has hearing like submarine sonar, able to detect the faintest whisper of acoustic radiation. I used to pray during naptime, as I sat in her room trying to will her asleep, that no airplane would fly anywhere near our house. If I could have paid money to shut down the airspace overhead, I would have. Because the infinitesimal sound of a single Cessna taking off 100 miles away would cause her to sit up and wave “hi!” in the general direction of the ceiling. (She loves planes.) Lately, she objects to hearing white noise playing in her brother’s room. While we had to explain to her that that particular noise was not up for debate, we did move it to an opposite wall and turn it down so low that even Lina can’t hear it from her room (we think).
In short, yes, silent nights are a-ok in Lina’s book. Excellent, in fact.
Silent Night, however, is not.
After all, why (she probably wonders) do we need to sing about it? And to be fair, once you start adding music you’ve ruined the premise. The night is no longer silent.
If Lina wrote a Christmas song–which she probably wouldn’t, first of all, but if she did–she would be dashing through the NO, laughing all the NO WAY. We’d have a lot of fa la la la NAH up in this house.
So instead, I’ve been sneaking my Christmas fix after Lina goes to sleep, or while I’m (very occasionally) driving in the car without her. It’s a reasonable compromise.
While I’m rocking around the Christmas tree, she’s sleeping in heavenly peace.
We can both live with that.
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