Life in a Loud House

This house is so loud. There is always noise coming from or permeating through some quarter of this residence. The boisterous laughter of boys, the sibling disagreements, the doors slamming, the acutely jarring ring of metal water bottles being dropped on tile.

There is always noise. Toilets flushing, the dryer running, the piano playing, the radio blaring. Inside voice is a novel idea with no basis in reality and has proven to be a concept beyond my ability to teach.

This house is so messy. There are always toys or clothes or paper left out somewhere. The tornado like aspect of the school room after someone has been doing such expectedly calm activities like drawing or writing is a sight to behold.

The backyard looks like a post hurricane disaster area 20 minutes after any play time. There used to be grass. I know this because I saw pictures from our backyard from 10 years ago when we moved in. The boys don’t believe it’s the same yard.

The garage more closely resembles a dangerous cave than a habitable space. It may not be a bad idea to have a rope to tie off on at the entrance so you could be pulled out in the event you trip on one of the 27 wheeled apparatus in there. Goodness knows what all is under the ping pong table.

This house is a time trap. Hours in the day are sucked away like dust into a vacuum. Spread the available time in a day across this family and there is literally not enough time for all that needs to be. The numbers just don’t add up. Scramble as best you can with the hours you have but there is always something else, something missed, something forgotten in the fray.

This house is bursting with sound, cluttered with mess, and racing in a chaotic time warp. But that’s just for now.

One day it won’t be like this. What happens when we go from the crackling-with-life present to 20 years from now?

This house is so quiet. There is no boisterous laughter. There are no boys. The only sounds are those my wife and I make. A noise in another room would be startling. 

There is no mess. The floors are clean and there are no finger, hand, or face prints on the windows. The remote control stays where I last put it. Everything stays in place; clean, orderly, static.  

The lack of kinetic energy belies the time trap this house still is. Time hasn’t stopped and the years are somehow going faster. Looking back, there was more time in a day than I realized. Slow or fast though, the past is gone.

Which brings me to the present. Maybe this house isn’t so much loud but full of life.