Resting

Responses from A Quiet Joy, a poem by Yehuda Amichai

During my unplanned parenthood all I could dream of was resting but there never seemed to be an opportunity, my child, my beautiful plump baby now a slender young woman thwarted my attempts at every turn.

Resting became a pursuit, my only ambition, when my daughter was in the crib I was told to 'sleep when she sleeps' but when I ask does the house work get done, 'sleep with your baby on a pile of dirty clothes next to a pile of unwashed dishes' they might as well have said.

The clothes and the dishes did pile up actually but still there was not enough rest ­ enough sleep.

My daughter had a rather ingenious method of resting herself, she would suckle very feebly while asleep, while I lay propped up by my elbow on the bed, this would be her practise throughout the night.

The person that visits new mothers, I forget the title, told me not to run to her every time she cries, 'You'll make a rod for your own back'.

I didn't heed that caution, instead I unwitting fashioned that rod. A rod that beat me awake every time my eyes got heavy for years to come.

Just too late I decided one day not to run to the cry and instead put my daughter in a crib in the next room, I waited the crying out, it suddenly stopped, thank God! I settled down to rest, so happy to be alone and be allowed to drift off.

What did I hear then? tip tap tip tap, she had found a way to climb out of the crib and use her new found talent of walking to come to me, and there I knew that I was sentenced to a life where I could never relax.

No rest for the wicked! I do feel a kind of punishment, maybe for having fancy ideas, thinking that attempting to love is everything, spoiling my child with too much attention so that she needs it now constantly.

A very desirable state to be in, but not always easy to achieve. You can sit down to rest, but the brain (or mind perhaps), is not at rest; there is this to be done and that to be done. You sit down to enjoy a cup of coffee and before you know it, the cup is empty and you weren't even aware of drinking and tasting the coffee. What I think is that resting is easier said than done, it takes a bit of working at. I find easiest to rest after I've had a long tiring walk; then I can sit down and enjoy the rest, and the brain also goes into quiet mode. I also think that resting and relaxing are not the same; I see resting as sitting or lying down whereas you can be relaxing while you are moving around, i.e., walking, dancing etc.

Now there's a thought.

Resting. Restful.

I said not long ago, "I can't remember the last time I had a night of restful sleep." I seem to have been functioning on some level of tiredness for the past 13 years... But I rest, don't I? My body rests, sometimes, at least while I'm in bed, but my mind races constantly. I think, I remember, analise, visualise, plan, make notes, organise, comfort, budget, affirm. Ideas, snapshots, comments, words, insults, memories. I'm exhausted.

I need to rest and yet I don't. I fill my time with work, chores, hobbies I never fulfil, errands. What about that quiet joy? I am the only person stopping it. I avoid it. Why is to so wrong to sit down and have a cup of tea during the day, staring at the window?

I claim I relax taking my dog out, but is that the same as resting? My legs move, my feet stomp, my mind races. Doesn't sound like resting.

Let's change the subject.

Rest my head on your chest.

Hear your heartbeat.

How long have we got, together, like this?

How many years, how many moments?

You can rest in the knowledge I'll be here for as long as I can.

Till death do us part.

Resting. Resting. Resting. It has dogged me long these past seven years, nagging away at me, demanding to be embraced when I only want to turn and shun. I do not want to rest, to encounter myself in moments of inactivity, to discover myself and realise I am not what I think myself to be. To realise the strangeness of myself to myself. Even though invariably the encounters are satisfying, the revelations themselves are eagerly embraced, savoured, just the idea of resting creeps me out! A stripped bare, laid out, exposure and examination of myself that leads me down painful routes of being scrutinised, immobilised by fear and submission, of feeling not a person. Not knowing who or what I am. And this is what I fear to touch, to revisit in the process of resting. The cold abandonment, the chilling absence, falling, scraping, bouncing off an endless glacial cliff. Resting. I need to rest now. To pause, to distance myself from the cold place I can go to that freezes my mind rigid with despair. Anyway, resting. Yes I am supposed to rest, daily, several times, with no distractions, to help my chronic fatigue. And I can’t do it. I am trying to find other ways of resting that I can bear. Giving myself a rest from certain patterns of behaviour, a rest from the clenching tight of certain emotions, strangling myself with taut effort! Taut. I write this word a lot these last few weeks in my poems. Taut. I like the sound, and the shortness of taut that feels pulled long. Rest is another short word that feels immeasurably long to me. Yet there is also the resting in between breath, not so long, and then the final breath, and what? Eternal rest? Eternal falling? Eternal joy? Who knows? Eternal sounds exhausting, not at all restful. Coming to rest in myself, in the nooks and crannies of knowing myself, small pockets of ease, easily filled with loose change, but more comfortable left empty, spacious, room for a hand to slip in and feel comforted, feel at home. At home in myself. Learning to like, to love myself. That feels restful; ceasing the endless self negation. Images of my friend Stephen I am trying to keep at bay this whole piece of writing. What happens when there is no more breath. What is beyond resting? An empty void, a glacial falling, or a spacious pocket to nestle into and call home? I feel so tired now,, so sad. I want to go home but I don’t know where that is. Longing and mistakes. Mistakes that can be undone or lived beyond. Letting go. Finding peace, finding joy. Resting in the stillness of tender being. At rest with myself.