The following is a beautiful, treasured paragraph taken from Katrina Kenison’s book “Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment”

Quiet has many moods.

When our kids are home,

their energy is palpable.

Even when they’re upstairs sleeping

I can sense them,

can feel the house filling with their presence,

expanding like a sail billowed with air.

I love the dawn stillness of a house full of sleepers,

love knowing that within these walls our entire family is contained and safe,

reunited,

our stable four-sided shape resurrected.

But those days are the exception now,

not the norm