Doing Nothing is Exhausting
Whenever I type “Calendar” into my browser bar, it auto-fills to my Google calendar for the week of March 9, 2020.
I had a board meeting that Wednesday evening, and a writing class Monday night. The kids had a dentist appointment on Tuesday morning. They had school every day, and gymnastics, swim, and soccer. Chicken had chess after school Friday afternoon in one of the portables. Coach Brad always gave the kids a Starburst at the end of practice, and last spring Chicken had gotten in the habit of leaning out the trailer door to holler at his brother: “BUSTER! WHAT FLAVOR DO YOU WANT?”
My mom came to visit that Thursday morning. We’d planned a chill long weekend; she just missed her grandsons. We ended up going to Home Depot to buy homeschool supplies because the day she landed school was officially canceled. Friday afternoon we ended up going to Costco for a case of wine, and to look at the empty toilet paper pallets and think, “This is something I’m gonna remember.”
Getting up in the morning is getting harder and harder. Usually, when Buster wakes me up too early my brain says “NO WAY ABSOLUTELY NOT” in a firm, clear voice. Lately, when Buster wakes me up too early my brain says “Mmmfmm?” as if from the bottom of a pot of warm chocolate pudding. Lethargy has replaced denial and it’s a different vibe.
Katie, it’s winter and you live in the grey, soggy north, you might be saying. The sun “rises” at 12:05 pm and “sets” at 12:15, you might be saying. And okay, you’re not wrong.
Housework that I usually do promptly has been sitting undone, piles of shit silently judging me from crowded countertops.
But Katie, you might be thinking, you’re homeschooling. Cut yourself some slack. Sure sure sure sure sure that’s true, good point, solid perspective there.
This morning I looked around my messy house and examined myself, where I lay on the play room floor driving a LEGO car around Buster with half-assed vroom vroom noises, and I remembered what our weekday mornings used to look like…
I used to get up and make breakfast straight away - no time to waste! It’s a school day! Yes please I WILL have a cup of coffee! Protein pancakes or oatmeal this morning, babe? And a glass of whole milk? And a bowl of apple slices? DONE.
Listen to this audiobook while I spin around the kitchen simultaneously preparing two breakfasts, two mid-morning snacks, and two lunches! More coffee! Wait, is it Buster’s day to bring snack to preschool? It is! Check the clock - we can dash to the market on the way to school if we leave in fifteen minutes! Instant oatmeal it is, boys, now get yourselves dressed while I drop an ice cube into the bowls so you can hoark it down! You’re dressed? Great! Hoark it. I said HOARK IT.
And while you’re inhaling your breakfast, I’m going to line up your backpacks and rain boots and jackets because I checked the forecast already and now I top off my coffee and DASH like the FLASH into my room to yank on the first pair of leggings that my hand lands on and whatever sweatshirt hasn’t been put away and twenty seconds later I come back into the kitchen and clap my hands like I’m shooing chickens toward their coop but I’m herding children toward their shoes, no time to go through the rigamarole of “asking” them to “put on” their “shoes,” we don’t have twenty minutes for that it’s SNACK DAY.
Jackets on! Backpacks on! I grab my bag and a go-cup of coffee and we’re OFF!
I used to do SO MANY THINGS. I used to be so comfortable with the momentum of my life far outpacing the momentum of the world. My days were full of time-sensitive low-stakes tasks; the world was rumbling along like a coral reef, changing at the rate of 5 millimeters a year, and it gave me the luxury to thrash around in the water above, going to bed exhausted so I could hop up the next morning and dive into the surf again.
When Covid hit, that relationship flipped.
The momentum of my life ground to a halt. My days emptied of tasks and filled with a single impossible goal: reduce risk to as close to absolute zero as possible, while knowing very little about the fatal disease I was trying to avoid. Essentially, do everything. And paradoxically, fuckedupically, the best way to accomplish that goal was to do… nothing.
No more gymnastics. No more soccer. No more snack days at preschool. No more barre class on Friday mornings. No more board meetings. No more Grandma visits. No more solo movies on Tuesday nights in nearly empty theaters. No more Red Robin on Saturday afternoons with the family. My life stopped on a dime, while the world became that snowball tumbling down the mountain.
Instead of packing lunches in the morning, I listened to the news.
I stood in the kitchen and unloaded a dishwasher strangely devoid of tupperware, and watched the world outside thundering toward chaos.
I am not comfortable with this inverse momentum. I am not comfortable knowing that the best thing I can do for the world is nothing. You’re looking at a girl who’d rather do 40 million crunches than a 10-second plank. Stillness is bullshit and it freaks me out. Now I’m the coral reef, growing nanometers a day, and the world is this crashing, tumbling surf above me. I’m thankful for my safe place out of the fray but FUCK, is there a scarier place to be than rooted to the god damn ground in the middle of a storm?
No wonder people want to remain in motion. I think I speak for all of us when I say I feel like one of the Scotsmen in Braveheart watching the British thunder toward me while I keep my feet planted to the ground because I have been told THIS IS THE PLAN, and a racist anti-Semitic wife beater screams “HOLD… HOOOOOOOLD…..” (to be clear, the aforementioned racist anti-Semitic wife beater is Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, not Donald Trump in the metaphor of our current situation. You can tell because racist anti-Semitic wife beater Donald Trump has never once advised people to HOOOOOOLD.)
Fuck your HOLD I wanna GO MOTHERF-- what’s that? Oh, the best thing for me to do is nothing? Still? You’re sure about that? Okay… thanks for the… update?
Where was I? Oh, right, FUCK YOUR HOLD I’m gonna…. DECORATE FOR CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER! This impulse makes perfect sense to me, and as of November 20, 2020, my halls are decked. Fa la la la la, motherf-- what’s that? It’s morning? Buster’s awake at 5:15 again? … Mmmmfmmm...
This morning I got out of bed and yes I DID have a cup of coffee. I poured a glass of milk and grabbed a bag of cheddar bunnies for Buster and we stumbled into the pitch-black playroom, where I turned on the lamps and he pulled out the LEGO drawer. It’s almost 10 now and I’ve changed from my sleeping pajamas into my day pajamas. Buster’s naked. Chicken’s in sweatpants and a single sock. Months ago their backpacks moved from their hooks under the counter to the closet, and last week finally out to the garage. (I needed the closet space for sweatpants.)
Against one wall of my kitchen there are three bright red storage tubs filled with Christmas wrapping supplies. The dishes silently judge me from the sink and the laundry room is quiet. The absence of sound is a reminder that I do still have tasks to accomplish; my joyfully naked and naked-adjacent children are a reminder that any urgency I’ve ever felt to do laundry might actually be a me problem.
Inside: virtuous, claustrophobic stasis.
Outside: the snowball rolling down the mountain.
I miss being the snowball. I’m taking it on faith that next winter or the winter after or maybe the winter after that I’ll stand at the top of a mountain and get to throw myself down its solid, barely-changing face. I’m taking it on faith that my shift as the coral reef is just that: a shift, not a sentence. I believe there will come a day when my every minute is spoken for with low-stakes, time-sensitive tasks, when the best thing I can do will be something again, instead of nothing. When the best way to connect with the world will be through contact again, rather than isolation.
Until then, hold. Hold.