Wednesday was mop day. My mom put us kids outside like Dino the dog on the Flintstones, then she latched the screen door. We would be permitted back inside when the floors dried. Perhaps it was the North Carolina humidity or the specific brand of Mop N Glo, but there were days that drying was prolonged. We rattled the door, yet she was unphased by our requests for the potty or overdramatized cries of being near death from thirst. She was alone in the small brick house that was usually thick with five kids and my dad. Factoring in the square footage per human of the home I grew up in, it would be about the size of a two-person tent. My mom held the sacred space of self-sanctuary for about an hour every hump day.

     I hated this. It wasn’t that I was all up in her grill twenty-four, seven. We often played for hours in the woods, damming the creek and simulating military battles, summonsed home by her adamant bugling of the car horn. It was that she was my mom and I wanted an unlimited access pass. What she was doing in there without me? Why had she locked the door? I didn’t care that my siblings were cast outside. I despised being excluded from her and I wanted in on the Wednesday secrets she was keeping with her said conspirators, mop and bucket. 

     I attempted all sorts of crap. I was being attacked by bees. I claimed to have what appeared to be a gunshot wound. I was foaming at the mouth, a sudden onset of rabies. The cows, chickens, and pigs were being abducted by aliens. There was a trumpeting in the sky signifying the apocalypse. She answered that I would probably live, that aliens were vegetarians, and that Jesus wouldn’t return to earth on a Wednesday. She would open the door when the floors had completed their drying cycle. Period. 

     It was Rural Route Two in the 1970’s and we were lucky to score three channels on a good weather day. The internet was still a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye, so she wasn’t binging on Netflix or pinning on Pinterest. When pressed about what else she was doing during her Wednesday alone time, because I was a pressy kind of kid, Mom said, “I was resting.”

     I narrowed my brain around this idea. Although my mom taught and modeled one of the best work ethics and healthiest lives I have ever witnessed, this resting behavior was sketchy.

     I dig movement. Every personality inventory or assessment I have ever taken maxes me out on the action side. It’s how I’m wired. I make lists of things I’m going to do during meditation. Shavasana brings me sleep or an intense staring at the ceiling silently chanting, “When will this be over?” among an Alleluia chorus of hard core in-and-exhalers. As though rushing the rest phase might somehow super-infuse the zen.

     In addition to movement, I also appreciate a good measuring. I track the miles that I run, cycle, walk, and paddle. It’s not that I’m in some big life competition, but if there ever is one, I’m prepared. I have a passionate love affair with the Garmin Forerunner data demon that I wear on my wrist. It tracks my steps and breathing and heart rate. We used to be one. Since our recent quarrel, things have turned a little rocky.

     It all started when I added a few extra miles on a Tuesday run and slowed my pace a little. In my defense, it was cold and rainy and at least I was out there getting it done. When I finished and looked at my results, Garmin called me, (and this hurt,) unproductive. I am a lot of things, but I am NOT unproductive. The nerve. 

     I considered going back to my Apple Watch. It never resorted to name calling, but I’m a forgiving soul. Well, I was, until the following Saturday, when Garmin called me, hold on.  Sniffle. Garmin called me, overreaching. When I clicked on the support data, there was some blahbedy about my training level being too high. It said, “Your body needs a rest.”

     My sports activity tracking device is slinging insults about my performance and demanding that I rest. Hmmm.

 

     Smokin Hot Love Biscuit is a fan of a break. He likes a nap. He likes to sit in the boat and gaze at the water. He likes to rock on the porch and hold my hand. He totally gets the art of being. 

     Over the years, on airplanes headed to vacation destinations, SHLB has tried to negotiate late sleeping and lounging. It made me twitchy to think about all that empty space, all that down time, all that hiatus-ing. I’m a filler but I’m starting to consider how all that movement, measuring, and stacking might be disruptive to meaning. The manic and frantic loud in their unproductive, overreaching attempts to make noise and drown out what might show up in the silence. Filling – the drunk, obnoxious roommate of feeling.  

     Recently, in a Man Cave harmonica jam session, SHLB demonstrated on his harp that the notes that bump against the quiet make the deepest kind of sound. The silence in between the blow, draw, and bend create a space in the music, opening my ear canal to a river of hearing. And when I really hear, really listen, to both the notes and the silence, I’m compelled to become part of the song. This can’t be overexplained or overthought or overtaught, it’s an arrival when there’s room, the rests become a reverberation, hoisting the notes and holding them tight.

     It reminds me of great speakers and artists and conversations that filled the void with a message while holding strong and steady in the space, expanding the experience. 

     If I sit on the charging station that rest provides and I’m open to the tranquil offerings of reflection, significance, and insight, perhaps the movement and the words and the notes ring truer. It’s a lesson that eluded me back in the day on Rural Route Two. 

     Mop Day.

     My mom has been resting in peace for almost fifteen years. In the space that has passed, the quiet hasn’t made her disappear or less relevant, it’s made her more poignant and real. I use the term “the rest” as though there’s always something else, the rest of the story, the rest of the pie, the rest of the week. Maybe the rest isn’t what follows but rather in the still of the very space you are in.