“Did you hear that?” Nancy asks.
First, how could I possibly know what she is hearing at the time. It could be a cat two streets over, or an airplane approaching the Lynchburg Airport. And second, even if I knew what it was that she was hearing, I probably couldn’t have heard it in the first place.
Women have especially intense hearing. It gets more sensitive after marriage and after childbirth. Sometimes women can hear things before they even happen. It’s Mother Hearing.
We have a bluebird house on the fence, about 150 feet from where we sit in the summertime.
“Can you hear the babies peeping?” she asks. I can barely see the box from where I am sitting, much less hear bluebird chicks peeping.
But she can. It’s Mother Hearing.
When your wife has Mother Hearing, trying to get away with anything that makes even the slightest noise is like trying to sneak up on a 12-point buck on a forest floor of dry leaves. Can’t be done.
Opening a single pistachio shell in the next room does not produce a lot of sound unless your wife has Mother Hearing.
“Stay out of those pistachios. Dinner is in 30 minutes”.
Try putting a few cubes of ice in a glass for a second cocktail without being detected. Not a chance.
Mother Hearing continues even when your wife is asleep.
“Bring me a glass of water when you come back to bed,” she says when you tiptoe across the floor to make your middle-of-the-night bathroom run, and she was snoring when I got out of bed.
“What is that noise,” she said recently.
Here we go again.
“What noise?”
Shhhh… Listen. I hear something rustling.
I put my ear down to my laptop and sure enough, I heard the faintest whisper of a sound.
Who knows? Maybe I have Mother Hearing, too.
