Noisy

"Will you guys please be quiet?" I beg.

My girls are feeding off each others frenzy. My older two daughters both have a handful of friends staying over, and there is way too many squealing little girls for an entire square mile, let alone one little house.
"Enough!" I scowl. "It's time to settle down. There is a 4 year old in the house and it is too late for you all to be carrying on this loudly."
The giggling continues.

I don't mind that they are having fun. In fact, I encourage them to laugh and it gives me great peace to know that they are able to feel this way with Nick being gone. I only wish I could be so simply delighted. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe its not the fact that they are rambunctious, or that its after 9pm at night. Maybe its just that I am jealous. It's been so long since I was able to feel so free. Every day that he is gone is like another pound added to the weight of loneliness that rests upon my shoulders.

"Mum, can we please have some soda?" my daughter Brianna now asks.
"Not a snowballs chance!" I reply with a scoff, appalled that she would ask such a question in the midst of my attempts to calm these kids down.
She runs back to her room and blasts a cd. The jingle of the high pitched, fast beating song that she continues to amplify grates against my nerves. I twitch. More squeals. My eyes close and I take a long, deep breath, picturing the air filling up my lungs and washing my insides with calm as I do so. The door closes to her room, softening the intensity of the music. Better. The other group - Tayla's friends - are still downstairs, and still chattering loudly about this boy and that boy, and that girl and what she was wearing and oh my god did you see who she's going out with and what about Mr so and so from school, he's so WEIRD!
Deep breath.
"Girls, do you maybe want to go into Tay's room to talk? At least that way I can have Angel down here with me and she can have some sort of quiet." I ask gently.
No answer, just more girl talk.

I try to ignore them and get lost in my own thoughts. How long has it been since he deployed anyway? I haven't counted in a few days because work has been so crazy, and then there was the arrangements for tonight's sleepover. Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday... that had been day 153, so 156 days today. It's too long. I want my husband home. Then maybe I could leave him here with all this commotion and I could go out and enjoy my own kind of giggling folly with my friends. I knew how to be fun, didn't I? At least I used to.

"Mum, we're hungry, what can we eat?"
The cupboards smack open and closed as graffiti stained, teenage hands tear apart my kitchen looking for snacks.
"There's some popcorn up top. Go upstairs and I will make it for you, but please just take it down a notch or five, okay?"
They hear me now, and a mess of skinny legs, not quite fitting with the rest of their frames, run upstairs. The giggling continues.

I prepare the popcorn in the microwave and focus on the blue numbers on the display, counting backwards, yet exponentially adding more seconds to how long Nick has been away. I look away, not wanting to think about it.
I turn to see Angel snuggled up silently under her blanket on the sofa. At least she is quiet.
As the microwave beeps to let me know it is done, I reach inside and pull out the popcorn. It's hot, but they can deal. The faster they have something in their mouths, the faster they are likely to be hushed. I take it upstairs to their little bellies, waiting for the buttery goodness.
"Thanks Mum."
"No worries," I say, "just please keep it down now okay? It really is getting late and I don't want the neighbors complaining."

Back downstairs, the thumping of their feet reverberates through the floor, shaking my pictures on the wall. I wonder what Nick would say if he was here. Would he be mad at them? I hope not. Frustrated I would understand, for I am feeling that now myself. Brianna's door opens, and the bass thunders down the stairs from her room.
"Brianna! Turn it down!" I yell.
Squealing again, and running down the first flight of stairs, then back up again.
"Brianna, its time to stop."

Then I hear the thumping on her sisters bedroom door. Another door opening, sending sound waves of the constant teenage garble downstairs entangled in the nerve grating song that seems to be on repeat.
I get up from the sofa where I've been sitting with Angel, trying to get her to sleep among all the noise. I walk to the bottom of the stairs and look up. I see all the girls on the landing outside of their bedrooms.

"SHUSHOLA!!"

They stop. Every last one of them.
Satisfied, I float back to the sofa triumphantly and snuggle up under the blanket with Angel. I hear the silence from the cd player. The voices turned to whispers. The doors close.

I'm looking forward to Nick coming home. I can't wait until its my turn to have that much fun again.