I Am Thankful for Noise

Loud.  Raucous.  Rambunctious.  Ear Deafening.

That's the family I come from.  I come from a woman who loves to talk and a man with a booming voice who also loves to talk.

So I am loud and I love to talk.

My mother is the oldest sister of five girls.  All of them love to talk.  And they talk over each other.

I am the oldest of three girls and a boy.  The boy is the only quiet one.

So last night I'm sitting at the computer, trying in earnest to finish my latest blog post before I forget the funny moments I want to put in print, and I am noticing the volume of the room.  At a regular level, meaning no arguing (well, no angry arguing), no boxing matches or football games to yell about, the room is full of noise.  We talk, we laugh, my nephew screams, my niece sings at top volume, the television is on.  And I look at the monitor to see my baby sleeping soundly through all of this.

Yep.  She's one of us.

Despite the fact that she is accustomed to sleeping in a pretty quiet environment, she settled right into the cacophonous clan.  It makes me proud.

I do enjoy my talkative, debating, crazy family.  They remind me why I love being from a large family. Every time.  Even when we fight.

At one point I observed my brother having a conversation with my brother in law while also playing a video game, and my sister having a conversation with my other sister who was sitting next to my brother in law.  So there's this triangle of discussions going on, my brother on one couch, talking across the room to my brother in law, my sister on the adjacent couch talking diagonally to my other sister, with my nephew crying in my sister's arms, my niece watching her cartoon on my sister's phone, my mother commenting on whatever television show she had been watching earlier in the day, to no one in particular, and my other brother in law playing a video game on his phone.

You would think this was chaos, especially in our small living room.  But it was a normal Thanksgiving for us.

In fact, if one of us wasn't there, the topic of conversation would frequently come around to what a jerk that person was for being absent from our chaos.  My husband, my brother, my baby and I all drove up for a quick two day turnaround trip specifically to be part of the jocularity.

The table is always packed, Celaya singing ABCs, Myah refusing to eat anything but bread, Shaun pointing out Teno's unshaven baby face, Teno coming back that Shaun looks as though he hasn't showered, Max telling everyone that he hates us (he's joking... I think), and my mother running around trying to please everyone, always sitting last, always cleaning up after everyone.

I love the noise.  Without it I would be lost.  I would be lonely.  I would be a different person entirely.  When I was younger my own personal noisiness was a bit obnoxious, I'll admit.  But I hope that mine has now become a more mature, playful, participatory noisiness.  And I hope I'm raising my daughter to be the same fun, joyful, infectious kind of noisy.

Like when I point out the pterodactyl on the page of my daughter's book, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! and tell her, "That's a pterodactyl.  It says, 'PCAAAAAAAAAAH!'"

And she dutifully responds, at top volume, in her sweet baby voice, "PCAAAAAAAAAAH!"

And in the end, I get in the car, my baby falls asleep, and we sit for an hour and a half of our ride home in silence.

The rest of the car ride was noisy, of course, music, conversation, ABC songs, and so on.

But I got to come home, put my baby to bed, and sit at my computer with the dishwasher running quietly in the background, my brother settled in his room, my husband watching Spanish television on low, candles lit.  I look out over the street below, cars rushing past, and think about how much I enjoy the quiet, the calm, the peace.

And how much I miss the noise.