54 55 THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW similarly reminders of that one great loss. I want Adam and Eve to have wanted it back—the sound of God’s presence. I want Eve to have turned around eagerly, Adam’s eyes to have sparked like they hadn’t in years and his feet to have carried him deeper toward the echoing joyful laugh. But I am afraid it was like they were ducking past strangers on the street, gazes bouncing nervously between the ground and the skyscraper-framed sky. I am afraid that the noise of their distress, made to fill that thunderous nothingness where they should have heard footsteps, eventually died down. Determined to move forward, to find some kind of faith again, they learned to live in a new way, as if the place was the same. As if the world hadn’t shifted and as if the loss had not been jarring. It would not do for them to ache for the sounds of the past. Their children, like me, would never know what it had sounded like for those few deafening moments. In that silence, though, is where they must have found the determination to move forward. The world moves beneath your feet so suddenly that you wonder for the first time whether this is real, because real has never sounded this way before. It’s because of the echoes and the deluded hope, magnified in the sudden silence, that you can turn your back on what has been and find a new sound. Raise a flag, help a stranger. Find a new canyon or weave a basket, and remember there is someone to show it to. Train yourself to listen for something else, gradually. Forget the sound of before, and remember her when your new school puts on the same musical you were both in. Someone mentions that band you both loved. It’s dating at this age, in this age. You text a boy every fifteen minutes, and one day he realizes it’s not quite right. But you still listen for your phone to chirp. - Maybe one day I’ll miss the video game music my brothers refuse to turn off in the car. The Simpsons theme song or golf match hosts when my dad finally gets the remote. My sister singing in the shower. My mom on the phone with her mom. Someone leaving the gate open and the dogs scampering up the stairs, collars jingling. But these are gradual. These are my world shifting slowly as I grow, at the rate it should. Instead of a sudden quiet, these losses fade into the background and are replaced by others, so that I barely notice. So I can say that maybe one day I’ll miss it, but more likely it’ll be gone before I know missing it is an option. - The planes came back. I’ve never known a world without them. It’s one of my many privileges to look up at them excitedly, rather than in fear. There are all these little losses in my life, little absences that I don’t always notice. But if all the good gifts in life are from above, reminders of an ultimate, incomprehensible goodness, then perhaps all the little losses are
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