underneath the noise

Most days it seems like there's a surplus of sound at our house.  There are slamming doors and laughter, loud burps and lots of thank yous, and those are just the acoustics of an ordinary Wednesday morning.  Their mostly happy racket could rival a hundred revelers, but I know our boys don't have a monopoly on commotion.

When they aren't fizzing, I hear what's in my own head.  Mom. MOM. MOM.  Tuck tries to gather my scattered attention. Watch!  He shows me how he's threaded the yo-yo string through the ring on his Camelbak, a complicated pulley system that snakes under the DVD player and around the baby monitor and attaches to the block wagon handle, which, with a little push, gets the water bottle to his lips for a drink.  And which, with a bigger push from a little brother, makes a pretty cool CRASH.

Buh-doper book?  Tollie hands me a story about heavy machinery and we sit down together to read.  All those big trucks have their own sound effects, and I'm not nearly as qualified to make them as Daddy and Da-tuck, but I try.  Buh-doper big!  Buh-doper muddy muddy!  I'm pretty sure he dreams about driving bulldozers.

Through the volume, underneath the noise and behind the boisterous, are susurrations of life.  The shy request right after breakfast: Can we make some cookie bowder (batter), and the rustle of the chocolate chip bag.  The soft whispers of brothers hiding in a closet "treehouse" and the predictable din of plastic hangers hitting the floor.  The endangered sound of matchbox cars on windowsills, of loud music without explicit lyrics, of little boy heartbeats in tight hugs.

They're chasing each other in circles, Tuck town criering his way through the rules of the next game, Tollie nodding and yelling Okaaay.  They are whirlwinds and high speed trains, rocket ships and forest fires, and I'm not sure what's passed.  I have to pencil in quiet time or I think I might go nuts.  But when  nothing's drowning out my own thoughts and I do have a minute to dream, I dream bigger dreams for them than I ever dream for myself.