I reckon there’s a special kind of quiet that only settles into a house after the children are grown. It’s not a sad quiet, not usually. It’s a settled quiet, the kind that lets you hear the floorboards creak and the old grandfather clock in the hall chime the hour. For twenty years, my house was a storm of muddy cleats, slammed doors, and arguments over who got the last biscuit. Now, the loudest it gets is when the ice maker drops a new batch.
So, when I walk into Tiana and Mark’s house, it’s like stepping back in time, only the storm has doubled in force. The sheer volume of it hits you right at the door. It’s a wall of sound built from shrieks of laughter, the tinny music of a cartoon, and the unmistakable thud of a small body hitting a piece of furniture. My daughter, bless her heart, is in the center of the hurricane, looking like she’s been through a wringer, but with a light in her eyes I hadn’t seen in a long time.
The place is a beautiful disaster. There are toys strewn about like confetti after a parade, and I’m pretty sure that’s a handprint made of chocolate pudding on her white sofa. My Tiana, who used to cry if she got a grass stain on her jeans. I see the look on her face when Mark walks in—that bone-deep weariness that every mother knows. It’s a look that says, “I have fought a thousand tiny battles today, and I have lost most of them.”
But then I see the rest of it. I see the way Leo, my grandson, looks at his daddy like he hung the moon and stars. I see little Mia, a firecracker if I ever saw one, launch herself into her father’s arms, all her toddler fury forgotten in an instant. And I see my Tiana, sitting in the middle of her wrecked living room, leaning her head on her husband’s shoulder, looking more at peace than she ever did when her house was spotless and silent.
People forget what a blessing chaos is. They spend so much time trying to tidy it up, to organize it, to hush it. But a quiet house is just a house. A house filled with this kind of racket, with sticky fingerprints on the walls and toys you trip over in the dark—that’s a home. It’s the sound of a family being built, memory by memory, mess by glorious mess.
I watch Mark kiss his wife, and I see it all. I see the ten years of waiting, of prayers whispered into pillows, of a silence that was heavier than any noise could ever be. That silence is gone now, chased out by the pitter-patter—no, the full-blown stampede—of two little miracles.
My own house is quiet now, and that’s alright. It’s earned its rest. But Lord, it does my heart good to come here and stand in the doorway of this beautiful, blessed storm. It’s the sound of everything that matters.
