I fought my way through the wilds of accounting. I had weathered the kitchen and the laundry. I had even escaped the island of waiting-for-a-truck (rescued by a very pleasant driver who whisked away my two pallets of books.) I found myself washed up on the couch in my front room. I still had an endless list of things I could do, but all the urgent tasks for the day were done. Some of the remaining tasks were post-urgent. These are the things that are supposed to be done regularly, but never get done at all when life gets busy. I pondered the array of post-urgent tasks as I stared at the spot of dried chocolate shake on the hardwood floor which has been there for at least two months. By default my decision was to just sit and listen as my thoughts unwound and paraded through my consciousness. They paraded right back out again and I promptly forgot them all. This parade of thoughts is a necessary process, like sifting chaff from wheat. I’ve been shoving thoughts into the back of my brain indiscriminately. The important thoughts will come back around for another pass the others will wisp away and my brain will be less cluttered.
I had not been sitting long (maybe ten minutes maybe thirty, it is something of a timeless state, but regardless of actual time, the thought parade had only begun) when Link came into the room and sat down in the rocking chair across from me to read a book. Reading is a quiet activity. I like my kids to read. It seems that Link’s reading should not have disturbed my thought processes, but it did. There was another person in my visual space. It was like a weight dropped into the middle of a rubber sheet which changes the landscape. I was trying to decide whether to attempt evicting Link, or whether to find a different alone space, or whether to give up on the thought parade for a bit. I had not come to any conclusions, when Gleek also wandered into the room with a ball of yarn. She wanted to make a yarn doll and needed a second pair of hands to wrap the yarn around. Once my hands were no longer needed, she sat next to me on the couch carefully crafting a small bundle of yarn upon which she bestowed a name. Then Patch wandered into the room with a small construction he’d made out of lego bricks. He climbed into my lap and proceeded to play a game which required the deconstruction and re-construction of the bricks multiple times in various configurations.
It was rather like gravity. For the first time in weeks mom was sitting still and not doing anything in particular. Like little planetoids these three people spiraled in close and orbited happily while doing their own things. It seems that half of the parenting job these days consists of just being a stable center point around which they can orbit and off of which they can rebound. This will be more true the older they get, until they are ready to fly off and form their own stable systems. The presence of the children obstructed the parade of thoughts, but showed me why it is important for me to make empty spaces in my days and in my life. There need to be times for just sitting, for offering my hands as a doll maker’s form, for being the platform from which adventures are constructed, times for just being there.