The children are at school, the house is quiet.
For years I thought I wanted this quiet, I craved it, and I still sometimes do. When the house is loud, the mess is overwhelming, I still find myself longing for quiet. When sticky hands are everywhere, too many screens are making too many sounds and I can’t even hear my own thoughts. Quiet sounds nice.
But when it’s here like this, I can’t stand it. The quiet is so quiet that it feels loud. The silence is overwhelming and I can hear my thoughts too clearly.
For years we lived in chaos. The noise had become so normal. My newborns crying, my babies babbling, my toddlers singing, screeching, banging and crashing. Noise is just a part of having small children. It’s always there, to the point that sometimes I wouldn’t even notice it. To this day, a baby crying in a coffee shop doesn’t irritate me, instead I look at the mother and feel a connection. That I was there so recently, and I realise that to look at me now she wouldn’t know that. My children are off at school, to the outside world there is no sign that I even have children, or that I was so recently in the same trenches that they are still occupying.
Back to the noise. It’s always been there, since that first fragile cry from my daughter, so indignant that she had to enter the world, the noise has been there ever since. Of course there have been moments of quiet; sweet delicious silence of a nap time, and not forgetting the anxiety of quiet when it has been quiet for too long. The lie in that you should be making the most of, not double and triple checking their breathing. The quiet when you have a toddler, that tells you they are doing something that they shouldn’t be. As a mother of young children you learn to be suspicious of quiet. And any good quiet you do get is always over too soon. It leaves you wanting more.
But this quiet is new. It’s different. It’s quieter, and it outstays it’s welcome. I thought it would be nice, but it’s lonely. Their absence is as loud as their presence and six hours simultaneously seems to last forever, and disappear in a flash. I know I should be making more of this ‘time’ but I’m distracted by the lack of distractions.
Noise was distraction. Noise was busyness. It was things to do and small children that needed me. It was mess and not enough hours in the day. It was reason, and purpose. It was a side effect of the most wonderful, and chaotic years of my life.
This quiet is time to think, time to do things outside of motherhood. It’s what I craved for years, but now it’s here it’s as scary and overwhelming as the noise was. This quiet feels like a loss, it’s a lack. This quiet is a new chapter starting, but I wasn’t quite ready for it. I wasn’t finished savouring the last few pages of the one before.
I thought I wanted the quiet. But I didn’t realise that the quiet would be this quiet.
