Last Sunday the perennial rain increased to the intensity of a monsoon. We were shacked up at my in-laws’ house on the Maine coast, shrouded in banks of salt fog. I dressed the girls in their matching blue Kitty raincoats and flowery rubber boots and sent them out into the elements to explore.
Three minutes later they returned, cold and drenched as two wet cats, mewling their complaints. Walls of white water streamed off the roof. Realistically, it would be another indoor day of books and puzzles in front of the fire. How would we contain their abundant energy for the 12 hours until bedtime?
Enter Grannie and Pop like two merciful angels from heaven, sent to shower kindness on worn-out parents. They packed up our progeny and took them out to lunch, then to a Cineplex an hour away to see The Lion King in 3D. Which left me and the father of these children, that cute guy I met a decade ago at a bonfire and beer party in an open field deep in the Northeast Kingdom, alone in a house for four and a half hours.
We spent nearly all of it in bed. Napping, snuggling, napping, reading, napping, eating… Basking in each other’s presence without worry of interruption or the need to be anywhere or take care of anyone small. The industrious Yankee in me was scornful of our laziness, how easily we gave in to sloth when presented with the opportunity. My inner perfectionist (that acid-tongued critic) commented that I could used at least some of this unprecedented chunk of time constructively—to write a blog post, say, catch up on business emails, or pen a real letter to a distant relative.
But giving in to the impulse to rest was delicious. Rain beat a steady rhythm on the metal roof and the foghorn sounded its low note out to sea. A week of rain weighs down your bones, makes your spirit heavy as a damp wool coat. Sometimes the most effective antidote is the most intuitive—rest if the body craves it, rest the way a wild animal rests, waiting out the rain in a cave in a wet forest.
On weekends at home, there’s always something else to get done—errands to run, meals to cook, messes to clean, projects to start or finish, the ever-present Internet with its myriad possibilities of social and business connection. I would never, ever spend four weekend hours in bed at home— unless I were pinned there listless with a raging fever. But here, in someone else’s house, I had permission.
Eckhart Tolle writes about our natural phases of energy and productivity in The Power of Now:
“There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive,” he explains, “and cycles of failure, when they wither and disintegrate and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer.”
I read and re-read these words, realizing that down-time is built into “the flow of life”. Periods of low activity are an essential part of the whole generative cycle, although as a culture, we don’t value them, certainly not on a daily basis, and not even for a single afternoon.
The outcome of my self-indulgence was a sweet, wordless connection to my husband, something that rarely gets nurtured in the continual chaos of family life. And for three days after our date in bed, I felt charged with vital energy— my tank was full. How often I rush around at 75 %, never stopping to recharge completely. What if every weekend included several hours of horizontal time?
Impossible, without grandparents to take our children away. Again I ponder the dilemma of modern American parenthood—the costs of the freedom we so ardently prize. The freedom to grow up and move out, to leave our families of origin and relocate to any city or town we choose, to marry for love and start new families of our own—to do it all OUR OWN WAY. It’s a powerful independence, but one that may isolate us in our separate houses, two adults caring for young children without an older generation to help. Two parents working and juggling busy schedules in the Great Recession, carrying the entire domestic load of shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, childcare, more. No wonder we feel stretched thin as rice paper, or beaten down sometimes like sodden grass in autumn rain.
Americans now revere “the fetish of the nuclear family,” observes one psychologist. But we might find parenting easier and more enjoyable if we widened our circle and entwined our lives with relatives. If we gave up some of our precious autonomy in exchange for more help with the children. In the absence of that interdependence, we can turn to our friends and neighbors—or drive ten hours round-trip for a weekend with the grandparents.
The girls come back from the movie both wound-up and dazed from all the driving and the Disney animals in loud 3D, scary hyenas skulking and the evil lion Scar.
When coaxed, the girls sing “Hakuna Matata” for us— hakuna matata, no worries, man. These kids are going to be okay. We can rest, we can rest. We don’t have to try so hard.
Tags: childcare · date night · grandparents · Parenting
I found this quote again yesterday. Back in college, these were my favorite lines from Sylvia Plath, though I didn’t understand the children and roses part (on any level beyond the symbolic). The “blood jet” spoke to me directly, of course, evoking my own passion for confessional poetry and emotionally-charged images.
