How Can It Be?

The house is quiet. I'm straining to hear even a single sound.  The occasional bird tweets or squawks, there is a very low hum of distant, steady traffic. I could put music on. But sometimes I am happy to sit in the silence of my loud thoughts. 

I have no idea how I became so sentimental, or why I seem to feel things so deeply. I have constant thoughts of past, present and future swirling through my mind all day long. It can be confusing. It can be joyous. And it can be emotionally draining. Does anyone else feel this way?

It's bittersweet - this growing older business. The kids mostly make their own weekend plans now. I am just here for the 'after-thought-permission' and taxi service. When did this happen? How did I go from a chaotic, loud house filled with plastic toys and crying babies to this silence? How did I go from wishing for stillness, to actually getting it? 

Somehow life hasn't become less busy. We are just living a new type of chaos.