I recently returned from a week in New Hampshire, sharing a house with good friends we haven’t seen in seven years. We each met each other’s children: my three kids and their one very well behaved, intelligent five year old who I can not imagine ever whispering the word “boobie” and then cackling like an insane person like my own five year old has done, not just at home but at preschool.
We had a great week, despite the clouds and rain that were never far away. The only thing I found curious was that I felt oddly tense that my kids would do something really outrageous that would reveal us to be overly permissive parents whose children not only have bad manners and watch too many cartoons but rarely bathe. So, I made sure the television stayed off–mostly–and didn’t let my son make farting noises on my soft belly, as he loves to do.
I shouldn’t have been worried since our friend’s daughter melded with our kids really well—-leading the chase up and down the stairs, and cheering just as loudly as mine when we were playing “throw the ball from the balcony into the living room and try not to break anything”.
And then one night, my sister and her kids came to visit: my niece and nephew who I not only love to pieces, but am relieved can actually be louder than my children. And, another friend came to visit with her two boys. My “boobie” boy and her six year old son were fast friends, or at least it sure sounded that way.
As I sat on the couch, holding some sort of strawberry drink, surrounded by eight very loud, wound-up children and six adults trying to talk over the din, I realized something:
I was very, very calm.
Good lord, at that moment, I realized that the chaos, the noise and the general thrashing of limbs has become so normal, it fills me with peace.
It feels like home.
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