Sunday, May 24, 1998

No music like the sounds of children at play

By Sharon Randall

For the past hour, I've been sitting at my desk, paying bills and listening to some children up the street play whatever they're playing.

I hate paying bills. I've managed to avoid it most of my life by leaving it to my husband, who seemed to love licking envelopes and getting depressed about our finances almost as much as I hated it.

"You should do the bills this time," he'd say, "and see where our money goes."

I didn't want to see where our money went. It was bad enough to know it was gone.

"Lawd have mercy, Mister Rhett," I'd say, batting my lashes, "I don't know nothin' 'bout paying no bills."

He'd roll his eyes to let me know he didn't buy my act. Then he'd finish the bills. I was not too proud to play the Southern dumb belle as long as it suited my interests. But widows don't have that luxury.

A few months before he lost his fight with cancer last January, my husband made me take over our finances. That, far more than his CT scans, told me how very ill he was.

"What would happen," I asked him, "if I, like, forgot to pay something?"

"They'd come get you," he said, "and put you in jail."

He was joking. I think. All the same, I try hard not to forget anything. I wake up in the middle of the night and shout, "Lord help me, did I mail the house payment?"

In 30 years my husband was never late paying a bill. I've a ways to go to match his record, but I'm trying. I write the checks, lick the envelopes and get depressed, just the way he taught me.

Anyhow, as I sat counting beans and listening to the chatter up the street, it occurred to me how much I love that sound. I remember it from when my children were little.

Playing outside

It starts in early spring as the days grow long and the weather turns warm and children play outside after school until bedtime.

There was always a gang of them out back, it seemed, our three, plus the neighbor kids and any others who showed up. To keep them out of mischief -- at least, to try -- my husband put in a basketball court, which he used as much as they did, and a water fountain that proved useful for getting drinks and squirting the dog.

They had what my mother called "entirely too much fun" out there, shrieking and laughing, bragging and daring, packing as much childhood as they could fit in a day before I dragged them in for bed.

There were days I did not love that sound, times when it gave me a royal headache. But I like it a whole lot now, for some reason, both in my memory and on my street.

For months, this house has been silent; my children grown, my husband gone. I have needed that silence, craved it, somehow, the way a diver craves for air. I still need it, at times. Other times I turn up the stereo and blast the neighbors out of bed.

But there is no music like the sound of children at play.

I could invite the kids up the street to come play in my back yard, to bring their friends, their bikes, their dogs, their noise and put an end to this quiet business.

Maybe I'll do that someday.

But I'm not crazy yet.

Sharon Randall is a winner of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the Best of the West commentary awards.

Scripps Howard News Service