My kids are the worst Hide and Seek players, like, ever. They make a mockery of the game, giggling in their secret spots then, when they get tired of waiting to be found, waving their arms or jumping out and shouting, “I’M HERE!” Little Brother is especially animated with his reveals, as though in doing so he’s winning the game.

And as far as games go, this isn’t a soul-sucking one to play with them (see: “playing” Transformers or Baddies vs Goodies or Zombies vs Plants, the rules of which are made on the fly, along with dialogue constantly directed by the little people, who punish for any deviation). The input of energy is minimal, and you even get a break while either hiding or counting, those few seconds of inactivity amounting to what feels like a holiday in the Caribbean depending on the day.

The other afternoon, I “found” Little Brother and the two of us set off to find The Kid in the remaining tiny radius of hiding options. LB came to a grinding halt and grabbed my arm: “SHHH! I heard his voice.”

TK’s voice has been the subject of much of my thoughts lately. And by lately I mean since the actual moment of his birth, when he was yanked from my abdomen and I waited to hear him before I was allowed to see him. I waited seconds in that operating room, then years–until he turned four–to hear him utter words (not anything particular…just Mama), then sentences (I love you may have been a highlight).

I’m not waiting anymore.

I used to hate it when people told me that one day, I’d think back to when I was waiting for him to speak and I’d laugh because one day, he’d never shut up. I wanted to scream at them that their experience wasn’t necessarily ours, and that there was no guarantee he would ever talk, because that was the hard truth and I needed someone to acknowledge it. (By the way, that’s a risky game–waiting on people to acknowledge hard truths. There is limited ratio of those willing to do it–better to stop waiting and start your own blog).

But some elements of those predictions did turn out to be true, even if the preamble to our constitution ending up being longer than was anecdotally comfortable (by most accounts, Einstein didn’t speak until he was four and I did not want to outrun that record). Now, TK’s days are full of words from start to finish. Many of them take the form of questions, particularly the exhausting Why? variety. There are also the long-winding whines (whinges in Australia)–these challenge my sanity on the reg. Blessedly, we get the proclamations of love and the jokes, my two favourite categories. These are oxygen.

Can’t forget, though, about the alerts, both excited (“The Spit Bridge is going up!”) and unnerving (“DRIVE WITH BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL! WHAT SPEED ARE YOU GOING?”) and the fact-providers (I would tell you all that he’s informed me re: dual clutches and make/model characteristics of hundreds of cars, but my brain does not retain such knowledge). His voice is narration to the day, and I try to remember that, not too long ago, I was the one who had to do the narrating. And that it is blessing, his taking this job off me.

But he’s not the only one. There’s LB, whose own personality is revealed in his speech: the way he looks out for others (“Mommy, are you okay?”) to the point that I worry whether he’ll define himself by the mood of the room. There’s his unceasing affection (“Mommy, you’re my best friend and my mommy. Your farts smell like roses dipped in flowers. Daddy’s smell like burgers and broccoli” #truestory; “Mommy I love you so much you can stay in this family forever!”). There are his endless jokes, all about chickens crossing roads to get to toilets, and penises. And there are the facts, partial to his own interests (“Did you know my friend Evie likes puppies?”).

Their demands and complaints drive me insane; their incomparable love humbles me. I’m usually somewhere between the two, my own voice remaining on the inside (“Breathe”) and outside, in some variation of love and admonishment. It seems I am always listening to one voice or another. And the loudest voices in my ear are often not the ones that should be, if you know what I mean: the self-recriminations, the schoolyard bitchery (not even talking about the kids here), the chorus of opinions from those for whom the world is not allowed to be greyscale or life, nuanced or people, complicated. These are the voices that I am, quite simply, having to learn to tell to f*ck off.

But grace shows up as sight and sound, and in voices that come as whispers and love and even questions and whines. I am learning which voices to hear, even when they take awhile to emit, or reach my ears. And more importantly, I’m learning to listen.