Noise

There continues to be so much to say about so many things. I'm caught in this murky ground between national debate and lived life. Pondering the impacts of culture on contemporary perceptions of adoption, or some such twaddle while trying to find dinner money while negotiating fraught children out of the door to get to school on time to avoid the walk of shame. Some days I feel I could write and write just to try and make sense of it all. The big thoughts are refusing to be caught this week and I'm caught in the small moments of our lives. After National Adoption Week I need a break from the big thoughts away from the noise. We have a lot of noise around here.

The silence was enveloping. We sat and carried on as normal Flossy listening to some mind rot Capital FW music on headphones, Peanut was felt tipping,  is that even a verb, The GoodMrsC was pottering and I was Tweeting. 

There was a new presence in the kitchen. I confess it took me a while to notice, I looked up and saw that the GoodMrsC was coming to the same revelation of this new thing. Even the dogs seemed unsure. 

'Quiet isn't it' we said together. 

Lotty wasn't here. Lotty, the human wall of sound was away for the weekend at some activity centre or some such, being fired from a cannon no doubt. 

Since she left eery and unfamiliar silence had descended onto Coates Acres.

Lotty came into our lives in January of 2006 and it's never been quiet since. She wailed quite a lot. Her first word was dad and she's used it at full volume ever since. When she was little I was known to wear ear defenders around the house, if I didn't my internal monologue had to shout to be heard. 

Her talking is like shouting. If you're holding a conversation in the same room as her you slip into shouting so that you can be heard. We all start shouting and we're not even angry yet. 

She doesn't have to be talking, she is noise. Like a human amplifier, she's stick thin but bangs an clatters around the house like she's wearing diving boots, she doesn't shut doors she slams them like every one of them has given her a personal insult. If she's nervous she wails, kind of musically, but wailing none the less. She turns the telly up so loud so she can hear it above the sound of her own noise. 

If she's happy she shouts. When she's cross she she's very very loud. She talks in her sleep. She never shuts up.

It's exhausting and debilitating, it sets your nerves on edge and creates anxiety in your heart. A friend and his partner came to visit us, they were thinking of adopting. When the children had finally gone to bed he looked at me like a man who'd been assaulted and all he could say was 'the noise, the noise'. Yeah, welcome to my world. 

I'd like to say that we grew bored of the peace this weekend and how we missed Lotty. Not likely, it was lovely and we talked and savoured the glorious silence between our words. 

She returned and shouted her exploits at us,  I do love her.