Proud To Be Loud

Actually, I’m not, but I’ve come to accept it.

For years and through the whole slew of apartments and houses we’ve lived in, I’ve noticed I could always hear our family – like when I was still in the elevator or out in the yard. I could hear my husband and kids talking, laughing, crowing.

I tried to convince myself that everyone can hear their own family like this, that it’s some sort of mystical, special sense.

It’s not, though, is it?

When we call each other to dinner, we never walk all the way up the stairs and quietly knock, whispering, “Dinner’s ready.”

We bellow “DINNER’S READY!” or my son’s simpler “FOOD!” from wherever we are.

When we are excited in a conversation, we get louder. The excitement can be happy: my kids telling me what happened at school today. (They can get so loud, I have to say, “You know, I’m right here next to you in the car.”) Or it can be negative: my son said, recently, when I couldn’t find my keys, that I “probably offended all sailors within a one-mile radius.”

I know people exist who live freakily hushed lives, diffidently whispering, tip-toeing around … unlike, say, my husband who recently clumped, in his bicycle shoes, from our bedroom, down the hall and down the stairs. When he got to me, he asked happily, “Did ya hear me coming?”

I’m with the little boy I saw recently in a cart his slightly sheepish father was pushing around the supermarket. Every few minutes, this little boy would just sing out, an amazing noise coming out of his tiny body. He sounded like a very loud bird, which made him very happy.

Here’s to the noise of life. May I never be too grumpy to enjoy it.