I can hear them in my driveway, about dusk most weekend evenings. The strains of ballads and timeless lyrics come livin’ on a prayer right down through what the old timers call the holler.
Music floating down from the rise behind our neighborhood where there’s a winery that must host a bride and groom every weekend from April to October.
Distracting me from 90s nostalgia, though, is a whoop and true holler as my 10-year-old races his friend down the hill, Nerf gun strapped to his back, feet pumping because that bicycle surely needs to go a little faster. Their voices, full of that unabashed joy, mix with the music and the crickets’ song as the night comes all alive.
A screen door slaps and a porch light flickers. Lightning bugs dot the places between the pines, and a dog barks when one of my cats lazes its way home. A car door slams, keys jingling, and my teenage daughters talk all over one another, home finally from a day working at the river.
In the kitchen, water runs and the dishwasher hums, and I wish I heard the vacuum over the old, worn carpet. Glasses clink, plates slosh, and someone yells for a towel. Later the house will still, and talk its own goodnight, and the last of the guests will leave from their event and the music will fade away.
These are the sounds of summer.
In the morning, the birds will call all over one another, not unlike my kids, as the coffee pot perks and eggs sizzle in the pan. Someone will ask about their shoes or keys, and someone else will turn on the television before I’m ready for canned laughter over real.
Later, we’ll find a playlist we can all agree on, and they’ll sit around the kitchen and the screened porch, looking at their devices, but hopefully listening to me when I tell them to set the table, wipe the crumbs, switch the laundry.
I’ll hear the freezer door unstick and the tell-tale snip of scissors on the popsicle wrappers. Someone will fight with someone else and before long I’ll be told how boring this is, just being at home.
But in my head, I can hear the calendar days tearing off, the countdown to the last year they’ll all be here, on my schedule and under my roof and not allowed to make adult decisions without me. I’d rather be home, on this quiet weekend, so loud with the sounds of motherhood than anywhere else. For this moment, this is my playlist.
This is the soundtrack of my motherhood.
Lindsey P. Brackett writes books and makes pizza. Find her latest novel, “The Bridge Between,” anywhere books are sold. Get a free novella at lindseypbrackett.com.