Last Sunday, my husband was upstairs working. It was 4pm, it had been a long day of surviving with the boys, making their meals for today and for the rest of the week, feeding them, putting them down to nap, getting backpacks ready for the week, and putting away laundry. The kids were in the playroom and for the first time all day, I was sitting down with a hot cup of coffee. It was hot, not reheated, but freshly made!

I opened my Kindle and I let myself believe, briefly, that I was having a peaceful moment. You know, the kind where you can read a few pages without interruption. The kind where you immerse yourself in a reality within the words in front of you. It felt so surreal and so grown-up!

And then my ears perked up. The house was quiet. Not a normal quiet, like when the kids do reading corner quiet or sit on the table doing art work quiet.

Too quiet.

I look up, warily. Then I heard laughter. Then silence again.

Quiet.

I called out, “What are you guys doing??” Then I hear more laughter. Then I knew. I felt the naughtiness brewing in the air, stronger than the Lavazza coffee smell from my cup. I got up and ran over.

Oh. Em. Gee.

They had dragged the play couch over to the pool table, and pulled over a massive cardboard box from a brand-new accent chair we hadn’t even assembled yet. They were climbing onto the pool table, from jumping on the box, and launching themselves off the pool table onto the play couch as if it were an Olympic event. Remember that silly scene on the show, The Office. Imagine Michael Scott, Dwight, and Andy screaming “Parkour” gleefully…only they are aged 2, 3, 5, and 7yo! My pediatrician brain initially thought, this is the most dangerous thing imaginable! Yet, as a mom, I knew this is exactly what four young kids would think of.

There were no rules broken, technically, in the process. “So you can’t be mad, mama!” It was just imagination, teamwork, and an obviously total miscalculation of physics and potential harm!

Now of course, I yelled, “NOOOOO! Stop!!” And of course, they just laughed harder. And there sat my coffee, abandoned on the weekend yet again. Once I stopped having palpitations, I realized something. It wasn’t the quiet that was the peace, it was actually the loud. All the laughter, the running, the sound of the bodies going thud-thud-thud because they felt safe enough to be wild. In this house, peace isn’t defined by silence. It is defined by life. And that is how it should be everywhere. The glimmer of the morning peaking in through the windows. The sound of the coffee pot grinding beans to initiate the day. The raindrops falling on the roof, pattering away. The distant trains hustling across the tracks, sounding its horn.

The simple sounds of life are what signify peace.

By the end of the night, after I finished putting all four of them to sleep alone, my bones ached. I kissed each of them goodnight and I told them I was sorry for all of my yelling. They kissed me back, one by one and told me they loved me. And in that moment, the loud softened into something a bit more sacred. While I am holding this joy, it feels so complicated when I know that not all loud sounds are laughter in this world, and not all homes are safe places to be wild. I hold both feelings, the gratitude for the noise in my house and the hope for a world where the sounds of peace return everywhere. I wish peace upon everyone in this world.