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.”
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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.
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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.