This House is Loud

I've taken up the habit of sitting outside for a few minutes during the day when I feel like I just need to clear my head. It does me wonders. The weather here hasn't been particularly nice so I've sat in the rain and the clouds and the cold usually in my sox and no coat but my mind doesn't seem to notice except to take in with delight the sharpness of and the contrast between what's inside the house and what's outside.

Tonight I made it through the hour of power - 5:15 - 6:15 pm - when I am trying to make dinner for a lot of little people and the little people are doing their best to exert their limited power over me and each other. I actually had a nice dinner prepared a few minutes before Fr. Joel was due to be home from work and so I snuck through the house, tried to quietly exit through the front door and sat on the porch breathing in the cold, wet air and working my way into an inviting welcome for my dear husband. About 2 seconds into my escape I felt the eyes of little people boring through my back and turned to see no less than 3 or 4 faces pressed against the windows of the front door staring at me. I squawked, I shooed and I skeedaddled those faces away. A couple left silently, one hooted at her brother and another let out a war cry and ran willy nilly for the nearest target to torture. It's ok, I thought, I'm right here, how much damage can they do in a couple of minutes? I'm still going to take my time on the porch.

I put my head in my hands and breathed deeply as I thought about the loudness of it all. This house is loud, no doubt. The collective noise of that many people can be overwhelming - even when they are all actually acting like civilized human beings and not whooping and hollering like hooligans. At the moment there was a lot of hooliganian shenanigans going on and with great effort I put my chin in my hand and chose to ignore it. From that vantage point, I could look across the street at my neighbors - people I barely know, who after 7 months time here are still virtual strangers. There's Loud Boy (so named by my husband after just a few weeks in residence here) on the corner. His family is rarely home. I don't know where they go but it was months before I even realized that this young man has 2 parents and a little sister. It's loud at his house too, the kind of loud that just seems to happen when you get a bunch of 18 - 20 year olds and their cars crammed into a small space of tarmac. They don't mean to be loud but, really, take it to a college campus please. This is a neighborhood with, you know, grown-ups and young children who take naps in the afternoon and dogs who bark at every disturbance to the territory surrounding their households. Yep, I'm awfully glad, I thought, that we're not that family (momentarily ignoring the fact that at some vague point in the future we will have several 18-20 year olds of our own in our household at once).

Next door to Loud Boy is the Quiet Family. They only have one little girl that I know of. I'm told through the grapevine that her mom would like to have more children but she is frustrated by a closed womb. I see her and her daughter outside together looking incredibly lonely with just the two of them rattling around that house all day without anyone else to play with them. Well, I think to myself, I'm glad we're not them too.

Next door to her is a family with two children (I think). One of them is a young lad of about 3 or 4 who likes to hang out his 2nd story bedroom window and call out to passsers by. That, I thought, is more like it. I get a kick out of passing by that house when I walk down to the mailbox and I hear that little voice scream out, "Hey Lady, whatcha doin''?!" I'm happy to tell him I'm getting my mail and then counter with an equally enthusiastic, "Whatcha doin''?!" Yep, that house is a little closer but you know there just isn't enough of those little faces hanging out the window - it still seems, well, lonely.

I turned my sights to the family who live behind us whose house I couldn't see at the moment. We know them the best. They have two children and are very loud - in a whiny, demanding and dysfunctional way. I am soo glad that's not us that I didn't even have to dwell long on that household. Which is good, because just as my thoughts turned to them I saw one of my favorite sights - a silver Saturn driven by a very handsome gentleman - come around the corner and pull up to the curb in front of the house. The gentleman got out of the car with a surprised look on his face. He's not used to seeing me sitting on the front porch when he gets home and he asked, "Is something wrong?" I replied with, "It's really loud in there" and gestured vaguely toward our front door. "Yeah," he said and I completed his thought, "but I'm really glad. I like our kind of loud."

I got my hello kiss on the front porch that night uninterrupted by the loud and then he proceeded to his favorite part of the day - walking through that door into the loudness after a long day away. He always says any man who doesn't have at least 6 little people scream out his name in delight and offer excited hugs and streams of chatter about their day the moment he walks through the door is missing out on the best part of life. He's right, you know. There's some loud you just can't beat.