It‚?ôs evening and as I walk into the house the sounds, they echo off the walls and reverberate in between my ears, jolting my body. It‚?ôs the children, of course, and it takes me a while to adjust and, really, I don‚?ôt know if I ever do, rather I just cope. They are loud, the four of them. OK, the oldest, she‚?ôs not so loud; but the three younger ones, well, they can send out a distress call to be heard down the street - I‚?ôve tested this. So I‚?ôm standing in the doorway to the kitchen, hanging my bag and jacket on the hook, saying hello to the dog and he is jumping on me, begging to be taken away, and the noise is deafening, as it should be, I suppose. And there, in the kitchen, doing whatever she is doing on any given day, or perhaps on the computer researching something, or on the phone talking, is my wife, who seems oblivious to it all. I can‚?ôt say that I understand this and, frankly, she says she can‚?ôt understand why I can‚?ôt just tune it out. And that‚?ôs OK as long as I find a way to cope because I know that one day the noise will subside and then it will be my wife and me staring at one another, wondering what to do with the quiet and the time and the space.? But that‚?ôs sometime in the future and this is now and I stand here, in the doorway, and for a few moments I watch my wife go about her business, unnerved by the brilliant cacophony that is young children, wildly yelling as they pretend to be something that must throw out a kick that happens to hit a sister who must yell at the top of her lungs. And, I wonder. I wonder just how this woman does this all day, without losing her mind. And to be fair, there are days when she does seem to lose her mind, she‚?ôll tell you, but overall I am awed by her ability to be the mom and the adult and tune out all that noise. Now don‚?ôt get me wrong, I‚?ôm not a coward or anything like that, but sometimes I just want to run and hide and, well, do things like go to work. And it‚?ôs not that I don‚?ôt enjoy my children, it‚?ôs just that, like I said, two five-year olds and a seven-year old can be loud and sometimes my head just feels like it will explode. Now, I said I cope and I do that but, and here‚?ôs the point of all this, the only way I‚?ôve been able to do that is by mimicking my wife. Yep, I watch her with the children and although she‚?ôll admit she has her moments - sainthood, after all, typically isn‚?ôt bestowed for years after one dies - those moments seem few and far between compared to the numerous times steam shoots out of my ears and the children roll and duck before the explosion hits that usually silences everything, but that‚?ôs not the way I want it to happen. So I follow my wife‚?ôs lead. Be calm, I tell myself. And I breathe; it seems I always forget that part. And I keep my voice calm and although I can feel the steam building, I know I mustn‚?ôt let it escape and somehow the children, well, they sense this and before it‚?ôs too late, there they are, calm again and I am breathing, even though I probably forgot to do it in the first place. Now, if I can only figure out how she tunes out all that noise. __
