A Gift of Peace and Quiet on Mother's Day
Since adulthood I've proudly celebrated Mother's Day with half a heart, because of its highly commercial features. This year I wholeheartedly make a temporary about-face, because of a scare: I almost lost my dear mother. And to think because of noise. My mother has lived in the same two-bedroom, public-housing apartment for 30 years. In the past decade, there's been a substantial turnover in her building. Most of my mother's longtime neighbors from "the old school" -- low-wage hard workers; loving but strict parents; non-destructive, clean, and quiet renters -- have moved on, from death, by choice, or due to other circumstances. Among their successors are the occupants of the two apartments adjoining my mother's, who are perfect specimens of a new type of public housing tenant: the I-don't-give-a-God-damns. Although not disabled or elderly, they don't (and won't) work, yet receive a welfare check, food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing, where they pay a pittance of a rent and no gas or light. You'd think that their thoroughly subsidized daily existence would make them so humble, ashamed, or even grateful as to live a life where they're seen but not heard. But no, they don't give a God-damn and are the first to get in their neighbors' faces -- and ears. Thus, for the past five years, my mother's two sets of new next-door neighbors have continuously and indifferently slammed their doors, blasted their TVs and stereos, held their "private" conversations, inside and outside their units, at the top of their lungs, regardless of the hour. Although they don't work and therefore have more than enough time to take their children outside to play, they lie around all day glued to the TV, while their children bang, holler, and tear through the apartment. Since their arrival, my mother, who suffers physical and psychological ravages of severe diabetes, has rarely found a moment, much less a corner, in her apartment when and where she can rest at her discretion. She rests only when her neighbors do or aren't home. My mother has tried to reason with them in person and through notes. The management office has sent for the heads of household, threatening eviction proceedings if they didn't shape up. The manager himself, accompanied by a Housing detective, even visited one of the tenants several times. Police officers and a social worker have also visited. Things quiet down for a week or so and then return to abnormal. Several months ago, finally having lost all hope of ever enjoying peace in her home, my mother slid into a deep depression in which she gradually stopped eating and administering insulin to herself. If this weren't sufficiently grave, she also "ignored" a small cut to the sole of her right foot. My mother wound up in an emergency room, her sugar level at a staggering 600 -- and her right foot putrid with gangrene. In order to head off the infection, a surgical team had to amputate everything below the right knee. The head surgeon told me shortly before the operation that so critical was my mother's condition, had I not hospitalized her, she would have gone into cardiac arrest (she also suffers from congestive heart failure) and probably died. During my daily visits to my mother in the hospital, her focus isn't on the loss of a limb, but the gain of peace and quiet. "I'm so glad to be here. I can finally get some rest. I don't have to listen to those people next door. I never wanna go back there," she slurs as she dozes off smiling. She can't go back there; her apartment isn't wheelchair-accessible. I've arranged for her transfer to a nearby senior citizen building that's equipped for her latest disability. What's more, it's impeccably quiet there, I've been assured. This is my gift to my mother this Mother's Day. In reality, though, this pending tranquility isn't a gift -- my mother paid for it with half a leg. Ed. note: John Dallas is founder of the Bronx Campaign for Peace and Quiet. If you have a noise-related question or problem write to: Sound Advice, Norwood News, 75 E. 208th St., Bronx, NY 10467. Dallas will try to respond in a future column. Recent Sound Advice Columns include:
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