Loving children sounds like noise.
It sounds like your tired voice yelling “slow down!”
And like hurrying little feet, swiftly picking up the pace.
It’s echoes from slammed doors and it’s also roaring belly laughs.
It’s listening to them chew and feeling like…why am I cutting bite size pieces for someone clearly ready to stick their face in this cake?
It sounds like “watch this”, like “I didn’t do it”, and like talking to my therapist.
It sounds like sighs of forgiveness and of defeat; we’re all just doing the best we can.
It’s thinking you’re about to take an unsupervised bathroom break and hearing that little knock.
It’s after school attitude, steamin’ like a freight train.
It sounds like a personal narrator- in case you weren’t an active participant in your life.
Loving children means loud, unintentional, misfiring noise.
It’s spontaneous and unidentifiable signals that half of us literally don’t even understand.
It’s listening to how fast the clock ticks; the minutes ticking, the weeks ticking… the handful of remaining days in this decade…ticking.
It’s finding a rhythm in the chaos, and dancing with the sound.
It is a symphony and you are it’s conductor.
The volume.
The tempo.
The “I’m not tired” tango.
It’s built-in-music to our ears.
We *depend* on it. When you love a child, you learn to embrace the noise. You learn to find the music.
Because when you love children, you really understand that life would be much, much different…if it were quiet.
Wallflower Writing 