When the Rest Falls Away

Rest. What a thing to try to find right now. With no school. No childcare. With three kids who are very much here—in a way they haven’t been for a year or two now. With chores and tasks and to-dos piling up, one on top of another. With a pandemic. With my sleep either coming in a blackout sort of way, hard and heavy and without dreams—or in a restless way, with worries and imaginings intermingling all night, resembling anything but rest.

There are only pockets of rest left. Little pieces in the day that often aren’t very consistent. Though I try to make them be with routines and rhythms sprinkled throughout the day. But that brings me back to those children. Rest isn’t found in long stretches or in the ways I’d like to find it: through pedicures and lengthy brunches with friends, with kids off on overnights with grandparents, consistent date nights, by doing literally anything at all without the threat of an actual global crisis lingering over my head. The heaviness so often seems to win. Until it doesn’t. Until I remember there is something uplifting in my morning cup of coffee, in sunshine, in the kids’ uncontrollable giggles. As Glennon Doyle writes in her book Carry On, Warrior:

“You have been offered ‘the gift of crisis’…the Greek root of the word crisis is ‘to sift’, as in, to shake out the excesses and leave only what's important. That's what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away.”

When so much else has fallen away, here are the things, the pockets of rest, I’ve been holding onto.

Giggles at breakfast time.

Iced coffee shaken up with heavy cream and vanilla syrup.

Morning bike rides when everything feels fresh and new.

Quiet (or, more often, “quiet”) reading time.

Walking laps around the park while the kids play.

Sitting and sipping more coffee while he figures out a new LEGO set.

Tacos for lunch is its own kind of spiritual ministry.

Sitting here with the window open every afternoon from 12:30-2:00. And every Saturday morning for as long as I need.

When she asks to do a virtual baking class. So we do.

Folding laundry. I know. I kind of love it. It feels calming and therapeutic. * insert shrug emoji here *

Reading on the front porch.

Or lounging on the deck.

That light while I water the plants in the evening.

And clay facemasks FTW.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Rest -- A Photo Essay".

Getting Used to Things We Hadn't Expected

This summer, we learned how to relax.

I’m sleeping past 7:00 most days. It is glorious. I haven’t slept later than 6:30 for most of the past six years. The kids still wake up stupid early but they don’t need me now like they did when they were little and really had to be supervised every single waking hour. The ages of four and six are vastly different from one and three. Sometimes they grab their own bananas or blueberries to kick off breakfast without me. Mostly, they wake up and play together. Pokemon or LEGOs or Barbies or some combination of all three. They play so well together that I’m terrified to announce it here on the internet for fear I’ve now jinxed it all by putting it out into the universe. Like the universe is pricking up its ears now and going, “Oh yeah. Those Williams kids have been good for too long. Let’s throw in some early-morning mischief and screaming.” (Please, no.)

We used to wake up and go somewhere. Anywhere. Lots of wheres. Every day. Every morning. For almost the entirety of the past six and a half years. I was proud of it. “Don’t you just want to stay home?” I’ve been asked. But I didn’t. I really didn’t. And neither did they. They got bored at home. So did I. Sometimes I would try to stay home but by about 10:00 we’d all be going crazy. We’d usually eat breakfast and get ready and pack up and be out of the house by 9:00. If we left at 9:30 it felt like we were running behind. And it was good. They would go to a camp or we’d go to the zoo or a park or the library or meet up with friends or run errands. Every day. We’d come back for lunch and hang out at home in the backyard all afternoon. And that’s been summer (and fall, and winter, and spring) for most of the past six years.

This summer, we don’t do that. Like, ever. Today I tried to get us to leave the house at 9:00 to go to the nature center and we couldn’t, like literally could not, make it into the car until about 9:18. The kids are hardly ever in the car anymore and it seems to create confusion about things that used to be routine, like “Oh, hi. Remember how you need to wear these things called shoes?” and “No, you do not need to bring three stuffed animals, a LEGO minifigure, an assorted variety of plastic crap, and two suckers along on our eight-minute car ride.” We’re also re-learning the use of these things called “seatbelts”.

Most days now, we don’t eat breakfast until 8:00 or so. I cannot stress enough how late this is for us. It’s unprecedented. I roll out of bed and make coffee and butter toast. Still in glasses and an unwashed face and sweatpants I picked up off the floor. Then we clean up and get ready (I’ll save you the many motivational techniques I’ve used in the past six months for the whole “it’s get-ready-for-the-day-time”) and I shove everyone out the door for a bike ride. Though it’s not so forced anymore. They used to whine but now it’s just routine. And after our bike ride we’re just...home. I have a loose morning schedule with things like silent reading and some math or art and iPad time but we’re just...here. At our house.

I thought I would be going crazy by this point, by mid-August, after it felt like we’d already lived through the entirety of summer by the first week of June, but I’m not. I mean, I am. But not as bad as I thought. (Because for real if I stop to think about *everything* too hard, well, then I start to lose my mind.) It’s like this quote I saw recently, though the source of the quote was “unknown” and I’m always skeptical of those. But this one stuck in my head:

“Life is for most of us the continuous process of getting used to things we hadn't expected.”

+++++

I still run our house by routines. My mind and body naturally seem to fall into these patterns, even when I’m not trying to.

We have a morning “school” routine. This is me when I’m trying to create routine. There’s a sign on the wall that’s numbered and color-coded. It starts with our bike ride and ends with iPad time. Though it’s not so strict. We can ditch it if we run into some neighborhood friends playing at the park.

I realized my whole day has been set up with these routines. Not consciously. Though according to a recent EnneaThought for the Day, I “cope with problems by striving to be competent.” Which reminded me of something Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote once, about being in a group where they went around and told each other the worst adjective someone could use to describe them. The people in her story said things like “stupid” and “boring”. I didn’t have to stop and think for a second what mine was. The word that jumped immediately to mind was “incompetent”.

Hence the routines, I guess. Which are illustrated most overtly by that schedule hanging in our dining room but also by the way I have of slipping my headphones on with a podcast at 2:00 every day while the kids have their mid-afternoon dose of screentime. It’s when I go outside to water the plants and check the mail. The way that’s also when I sit and fold laundry or organize the mudroom and clean up the kitchen, a gentle re-entry to the world after I’ve spent the past hour or so working. Or the way I unload the dishwasher every morning, first thing, while getting the kids their breakfast. Just these rhythms set up so I can move about my day, get things done. So I can be competent.

+++++

The routine leads us to our backyard every afternoon around 2:30. We eat a snack on the deck and sometimes I read to them and they peel off, one-by-one as they finish their crackers and applesauce pouches to play on the playset or dig in the sandbox or see how big a splash they can make in the pool.

It’s here that I sit, because though I have a small burst of energy around 2:00, I’m almost always useless by mid-afternoon. 

We’ve learned to rest, the kids and I. Because of the pandemic. Because of these routines. Or maybe in spite of them. They play (mostly) contentedly in the backyard. And while our summers always involve a lot of backyard time, it’s like this year they’ve rediscoverd it. I sit on the deck and read (or *ahem* scroll Instagram). And it sounds idyllic but also I’m interrupted every 2.3 minutes to bring someone a towel or their goggles or their shoes (because there’s always at least one kid refusing to wear shoes). 

We literally have nowhere to be. Except exactly right where we are. And, most days, that feels more freeing than I ever would have expected.

Summer Isn't Canceled

“What are you doing this summer?” has always been a question among the parents in my sphere. This year the answers have less to do with family vacations, camps, sports, and childcare. This year the questions really come down to: “Are you going to continue schoolwork?”... “Is your camp/daycare/class open and if so, will you send your kid(s)?”... “Should I send my kid(s)?”... “Are you traveling?”... “What activities are you doing at home?”... 

The transition to summer is so awkward this year. As I write this in early June, on our last official day of school and distance learning, it feels as though it should be August 31st. We’ve been home for three months. That’s like an entire summer. Already. The kids are fighting more, crying more, and bored with their toys. We go from being perfectly fine to totally and completely sick of each other in 2.3 seconds flat. I’m more prone to either snapping or adopting an attitude of, “Sure. If you want to wear your swimsuit to bed or eat candy for lunch and do those things without my assistance? Cool. Go ahead.” Seriously, how is it not the end of summer?

My sense of time may be skewed, but the calendar doesn’t lie. We’ve got a long way to go.

It’s particularly long when we don’t have our normal summer things to look forward to. Our baseball league held out hope for months only to officially cancel this past week. The two-morning-a-week camp my children have attended for the past two years? Also canceled. We’re signed up for a zoo camp in August I can only assume will go the same way. We canceled our family vacation, a vacation my mom’s family has been taking for over 40 straight years. And let’s not forget The Great Minnesota Get-Together: canceled. Summer 2020 is really bringing an entirely new meaning to the term “cancel culture.”

Still. Regularly-scheduled plans or not, summer is here.

Read the rest about the state of summer over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Here

It hits me sometimes, randomly. 

You should be at school right now.
Or
I should be picking Nolan up from preschool.
Or
We should be at dance/gymnastics/swimming/t-ball.

Whatever the moment, the refrain in the back of my head is always the same:

You shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.

Though there are days I can hardly remember our “before”. There used to be times, numbers on the clock, that were burned into my brain: 

8:25: leave for preschool drop-off
8:46 (I think?): Caden and Brooklyn catch the bus
11:10 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: leave to pick Nolan up from preschool
11:10 on Thursdays: leave to meet Caden and Brooklyn for lunch
6:00 on Tuesdays: dance
5:30 or 5:45 or 6:00 (I can’t remember) on Thursdays: gymnastics for the boys

I don’t know what they’ll remember about this time, at six years old, at four years old. Will they remember not being able to go to school? Will they remember all these days strung together at home? Will they remember watching videos of their teacher, of worksheets, of submitting activities on their tablets? Will they remember getting more screen time? 

They were only in school for all of six months, after all. Maybe all this being home again simply seems like a return to normal. There’s a sense in which they don’t know what they’ve lost. The Kindergarteners were supposed to have an end-of-year zoo field trip, but Caden and Brooklyn didn’t know about it yet and I’m sure not about to tell them. They should be experiencing their first track-and-field day at school, instead we’re doing it virtually. (See also: explaining what track and field is.) Nolan should have an end-of-year party, complete with cookies and songs for us parents. He should be playing his very first year of t-ball.

There are some things they know they’re missing, kind of, but still, they’re intangible. I’m not sure they would have remembered if we hadn’t told them about missing their dance recital or that baseball probably isn’t happening this summer. They understand a little bit more that they’re missing out on museums and parks and playgrounds and playdates and beaches. Normal (what should be normal) kid stuff.

There’s a sense in which I’m carrying all of these losses for them. I’m the mom. I feel them more keenly. I know what they’re missing.

You shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.

Kids are resilient, these three are resilient, I know they are, they’ll be fine, we’ll all be fine. (I’m fine, this is fine, everything is fine.) They’ve been troopers. They had more questions than tears (in fact, there were none) when we told them they couldn’t play with their friends, go to school, do their regular activities. Still, I worry about their lost childhood. (Too much? Too dramatic?) Because they’re only little for so long, we only have them for 18 years, they’re only little little for much less than that. Even the loss of one summer (three months of school, one dance recital, one session of swim lessons, one season of baseball, countless birthday parties, one family vacation, all the things) feels like a lot.

And they’ve been great but it’s still hard. It’s hard because we’re all home together and even on the days when things are pretty good, it’s hard. It’s hard because just a few days ago I realized that Caden and Brooklyn have actual real-live email accounts for school to check and let’s all please remember that they’re SIX right now so that falls on me. (Hi, I basically ignore them.) It’s hard because we can’t go anywhere we usually go for fun. It’s hard because I recognize the privilege in my complaints and how can I even be talking when we have a backyard and the time and ability to homeschool and enough money for food and toys and ice cream just because. It’s hard because we’re all here together and have been here all together for so long and I saw a post on Facebook the other day that said the way our kids talk to each other is a reflection of how we speak to them and if that’s true then we’re doomed, all doomed, because there are days where I don’t think we can all speak any words around here without crying and/or yelling and so apparently they’re all going to grow up to be serial killers instead of kind human beings and I’m sorry, society, but I tried.

+++++

We usually go on a bike ride in the afternoon. Usually the boys take their scooters and Brooklyn takes her hand-me-down bike from a neighbor and sometimes it hard for me to keep up. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get everyone to go but they all enjoy it in the end.

They’re (mostly) diligent with their schoolwork in the morning. I make sure we’re done by lunchtime. Nolan is basically another Kindergartener right now and sits right along with Caden and Brooklyn, counting by 10s and segmenting words and yelling out answers to their teacher’s questions. It will be interesting to see him go to Kindergarten in two years when he has a third of the curriculum under his belt. Heck, it will be interesting to see him go back to preschool in the fall (back, back, please go back) after sitting through Kindergarten material for the last few months,

“Mommy,” Brooklyn said the other day, “In the fall, when we’re first graders, the sickness could still be here.”

“Yes,” I said. “We might still be doing school kind of like this in the fall.”

(You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here.)

She scampered off after that revelation. I didn’t tell her yet, I won’t until there’s certainty, but I’ve been mentally preparing for school in the fall to look different than usual, different even than what we’re doing now, though I don’t know what that looks like yet. Every other day? Every other week? Half days? Still distance learning some days, some weeks, every day? I’ve been researching iPads to replace their too-slow tablets as a precaution, been mentally preparing for the rest of 2020 to look nothing like what we ever would have thought.

Little did I know when I mourned Caden and Brooklyn’s start of Kindergarten (But like a HAPPY mourning. Oh what I would give to have an ordinary sadness right now.) that I would get a mere six months of reprieve before they’d all be home again, 24/7, full time, more work right now than they have been for the past couple of years.

Here we are. Usually on top of one another. (I don’t know why we have all this square footage, both outside and in, when all they ever do is share the same few square feet of space.) And sometimes that looks wonderful and idyllic and other times it involves screaming and crying. But we’re here. It’s here that we’re learning and working and cooking and baking and laughing and shouting and playing and reading and connecting. Right here. Which is, unexpectedly, unusually, unbelievably, exactly where we should be.

When the Light Isn't Where I Left It

I’ve been mulling over the idea of going where the light is.

The thing is, that light? Where it is changes for me. As often as my emotions, maybe, these days. What brings me joy one day (one hour, one moment) can be anathema to me the next. 

Sometimes my kids are the light and the next minute I want to ship them off to Siberia. Sometimes cooking is the thing that steadies me and the next meal I don’t want to chop another vegetable, fry another egg, or mix together flour, water, salt, and yeast ever again. Sometimes I can’t get away fast enough to type up the words in my head and other times I look at an empty page, certain I won’t have anything to say ever again in my entire life. Sometimes I’m so glad Tyson is here and we’re in this together and other times I want to self-quarantine myself away from him. Sometimes I find hope in the grocery store, in the fact that I’m out— free! —from my house. Other times it’s the most depressing place in the world as I walk around and realize we can’t even see each other’s smiles anymore underneath our masks. Sometimes I find the light in the normal, ordinary routine of our days. Other days I want to scream in frustration at the mundane and instead find joy in wearing a nice top and jewelry, in hosting snack time on the front porch, ordering lunch for myself just because.

You see my problem here. It can make things difficult, this finding of the light. It’s not always where I’ve left it.

Still. As I mull this whole “go where the light is” idea over, Albus Dumbledore keeps popping into my head.

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

I don’t only need to turn it on these days. I need to actively search for it.

It’s there. I (almost) always find it. Even when it’s not where I’ve found it before.

That breakfast light, though.

A real breakfast with a side of comfort reading.

School as an anchor in our day.

Just look how studious they are.

Unscheduled coffee break.

Unscheduled jump-off-the-Nugget-free-for-all break.

Chaos.

A teacher who captivates them with her videos as tulips listen in.

Lunch delivery. Just for me.

Happy sidewalk art.

Buds budding. The bluest of skies.

Friends who also live in your house.

Snacktime in the living room. (Previously absolutely, positively 1000% forbidden. Here we are.)

Friends who live in your house part 2. This time with LEGOs.

Cheers.

Impromptu PJ dance party.

The magic of books.

That evening light, though.

Flowers reaching toward the light, even as it fades away.

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Go Where the Light Is".