The Gift of Boredom

I stood at the kitchen sink and not too quietly called out "I want every single one of you kids to go outside right this minute!" It was a stormy day and my five children had stretched my patience to the very limit with bickering, pestering each other and me and chants of "We're boooooored!" My nerves were frayed. "But Mama! There's lightning and thunder outside!" Feeling the storm beginning to brew inside of me might be worse than the one I could see out my window, "Then go sit in the car parked in the driveway. You'll be just fine and I can see you from where I'm standing." My oldest, Natalie, quite surprised but always practical asked "Even the baby?" I said, "Yes, take him too. You'll all be fine!"

She slung the baby on her hip and three other small people followed behind her. I watched as they all got into the white Chevy Nova, Natalie in the driver's seat of course, and shut the car doors. They looked through the windshield up to the kitchen sink where I stood looking back at them. They grinned. I breathed, and grinned back. A change of scene. A re-direct. I was able to collect my scattered thoughts and they were able to have a small adventure. Lightning and thunder included.

The older kids still talk about "that one time you sent us out to the car in the lightning" to this day. Sometimes I wonder what or even if I would do anything different all these years later.

A few of my children are now themselves in the throngs of parenthood. "Screen-time" is the new vernacular of the modern day parent of littles. A constant tug-of-war to protect young eyes from too much....well too much everything at their fingertips, knowing full well that their friends parents might not have the same concerns and it's only a matter of "hanging out" and then eyes are back onto screens.

"I'm bored". How many times did I say those two words to my mother. I must have been around five years old, and the words slipped out. She very nonchalantly told me "Then go sit on a tac." "Mama, what's a tac?!" I asked. "Ohhhh just something my mother used to tell me." She said. I also have a memory of her sitting me on the front porch steps and locking the screen door. I think she just needed to not have me in her space for a few minutes; thinking her own thoughts.

One summer, my little brother Joel was bored. "I want to dig to China." he said one morning over a bowl of cold cereal. "Go ahead!" My mother, known for her free-range style of raising her children, told Joel he could use one of Daddy's shovels and see how far he got. She walked with him out to the backyard, and wandered over to the side yard where there were no known pipes running underground. "Right here." she said. "You can did to China right here." Almost every morning that summer I'd wake up with the sound of a shovel hitting the hard Arizona clay dirt. I'd lie in bed irritated to be woken up, but also marveling as I gazed through the blue lace curtains of my bedroom window and see my little brother in his Levi cut-offs, no shirt, dirt all over his hands and determined face,

By the end of the Summer he had dug a hold deep enough that he could stand in it; the top of his head level with the surrounding grass. Joel is now a mechanical engineer. He has designed and orchestrated the building of giant bridges and the like.

Not only did we not have "screen-time", we didn't have a T.V. Daddy had thrown our only black and white television out the back door, after one too many arguments about which of the three stations we were all going to watch. Televisions were big and boxy back in the day, with things like glass tubes and such inside them to make the picture appear on the screen. The sound of those glass tubes and the glass T.V. screen shattering into thousands of sparkling pieces seared into our memories. Daddy typically read about three books a week, plus the newspaper. Mama was also an avid reader. T.V. gone? No biggie for them. We kids would have to figure out how to live without Gilligan's Island, The Partridge Family, and The Brady Bunch.

We quickly learned how to entertain ourselves. I mothered my baby-dolls, mothered my cat, mothered my little brother, read books, made mud-pies, roller-skated, knitted, played with match-box cars in the dirt, board games, and jacks. Played with my pet-rock yes I asked for a pet rock for Christmas. Hiked, pretended hospital with my babies under the piano (the petals were used to start my baby doll's hearts). Pretended barber shop with my baby dolls. Don't ask. Practiced my cursive by copying out of books of poetry to no avail, I still have the hand-writing of an eight-year-old. Played on my mothers type-writer. I'd ask her to read what I had typed. She read it exactly as I'd typed it. "ssskejodjsjd;djdka;ec,llllllxpiap" I would laugh, and she would laugh. A lot of spent typewriter ribbon bought her some time to think her own thoughts. And to breathe.

This winter has been pretty relentless. Very few days of sun and a lot of snowfall. Dave and I bought snow shoes a few weeks ago, but the weather app occasionally warns of avalanche danger and I'm a real chicken when it comes to any sort of risk to my physical being. I do miss our evening hikes though. We'll have to venture out one of these days soon.

I wonder to myself if I actually take time to just do nothing. To sit still and not DO anything; to not listen to anyone or anything. No podcast or book. No music. No social media. When I was a young mother, my time was so taken up; my space so filled with my people. Boredom would have seemed a luxury. The often chaotic, unrelenting hum of family life now only happens when we gather for family dinners or events; and I bask in it. It was my life for so many years. Perhaps I am trying to drown out the new silence of an empty nest with busyness.

Today the sun shone. Really bright. I decided to make my daily trip into town to get the mail while it was sunny. After I got back into the car and sorted through the mail, I started thinking of all the things I needed to do when I got back home. Clean out the refrigerator, start collecting paperwork for taxes, check work emails, work on the ARC report for the extension to the cabin....my list was getting longer and longer. I tipped my head back while the thoughts started to swirl. The sun felt so good. I think I'll just sit here and do nothing. I wasn't bored. But I put myself on a time-out. A time-out in the car. To just think. And to breathe.

Motherhood is both exhilarating and exhausting. Moments of unspeakable joy peppered with worry, fear, and sometimes sadness. It is an unbelievable amount of work. One thing it never is, is boring.

Boredom is a gift. Open it carefully and use it wisely.