It was 8 PM when I finally arrived home. I unlocked the gate using keys that seem to play a music singing “Momma’s home.” The clashing of many keys in this keychain created a noise enough to summon my kids’ attention from inside of our home.

In an instant, I heard them running, shrieking and shouting “Momma!!!!” The sound of their slippers were racing and pounding toward me. Their shrill voices denied any vexation from me but intensified this joy of coming home. Their shout, oh their shout! Can there be any shout more rapturous than this? It’s like meeting your cheering fans who were more than ready to gobble you alive!

Upon stepping a foot into our home, the noise did not die down but increased with countless different stories coming from them. Ate Hale was saying something while Chantry was trying to narrate another thing. I nodded with a couple of yes to each of them to convey that I was listening even if it was more of their noises that I understood than their stories.

I was tired and almost starving from taking care of a few things outside. Coming home was like winning an award where I thought I had a thousand of spectators cheering before me only to find out there were only two. Their shouts rang freely as if it were ready to topple the large cheering audience at Mall of Asia Arena. (Haha!)

Seeing my kids meet me with energy and excitement sufficed to dissolve every inch of exhaustion in my body. Their melodic noises only evoked joy, peace and love and continually filled our house with it.

Hale and Chantry are only 8 and 4 years old respectively. Their zeal to have me back home again after a long day of being apart may have something to do with their young age. Thus, makes me wonder if they would still be excited to see me back home again after a long day of being apart when they become teens themselves—when they would have more friends to surround them and when their childlikeness would have diminished a little to feel a little embarrassment of being extra-sweet to their mother.

If their age has a lot to do with their excitement to see me back home again tonight, I hope it also has something to do with the solid blocks of connection that I’ve instinctively built with them being my daughters.

I turned off the light then tucked ourselves in bed together. Slowly, their noises were being replaced with silence, peace and ultimately security. Security of lying beside these two angels who bring nothing but joy, meaning and purpose into our life.