Why Can't I Just Sit?
After thirty-three years of raising my seven children and always having someone or something that needed my attention, I'm learning that doing less doesn't mean I am wasting my life.
Lately, I’ve been doing something that still feels a little unsettling.
Absolutely fucking nothing, for once.
And I mean that pretty literally. I make coffee. I sit by the window. I watch the birds, notice what’s blooming, and stare at a tree for probably longer than anybody needs to stare at a tree. And sometimes, because this is Florida in August and September and outside feels like Satan’s ass crack, I watch nature videos on YouTube instead.
I’m not even really doing nature for crying out loud. I’m watching somebody else do nature from my air-conditioned living room. Basically, I have become the quintessential old person sitting on the porch watching life go but through my window.
And weirdly enough, I like it.
What I don’t like is the little efficiency manager in my head who occasionally shows up with a clipboard asking what exactly I have accomplished today. Apparently I still think sitting is a reward for having accomplished a task beforehand.
That is the part I’m trying to unlearn.
For most of my adult life, there was always something that needed doing. Not fake busy. Not “I have three brunches and a Pilates class” busy. Actually busy.
I had kids to feed, bathe, drive, teach, discipline, comfort, advocate for, worry about, and keep alive. There were doctor and therapy appointments, court dates, school conferences, groceries, jobs, bills, laundry, sibling fights, illnesses, crises, homework, church, and about seventeen people asking me where something was while I was already doing six other things.
Busy wasn’t a personality trait. Busy was the damn job.
When I had my third child, I remember asking my grandmother what it was like raising eleven kids. I didn’t see her often because we lived thousands of miles apart, so I remember taking the opportunity to ask her.
She said the first four were really hard. Then it got easier. There was a rhythm.
At the time I thought, How in the hell does eleven children get easier?
Now I know exactly what she meant.
I have been hardcore parenting for thirty-three years. And only recently has it gotten easier in these really basic, glamorous ways.
They can feed themselves. They can drive. They can wash their own damn clothes.
They can do dishes too.
They don’t.
But they can.
They have siblings, friends, spouses, partners, coworkers, entire lives full of other people who can listen to them, help them, distract them, give them advice, bring them food, or tell them they’re being an idiot. It does not all funnel through me anymore.
That is a huge shift.
I am still their mother. I still care. I still show up. But I am no longer the entire support department.
And I want to say something to younger moms because old people love to say this to you:
“You’ll miss these days.”
Usually while somebody was crying, somebody else had spilled something, I had one kid hanging off me, another one needed a ride, and I was trying to remember whether I had eaten anything that wasn’t somebody else’s leftover PB&J.
“You’ll miss this.”
Listen. I cherish those years. I cherish the babies. The little voices. The ridiculous questions. The warm bodies crawling into my bed. The drawings. The sticky hands. The absolute insanity of having a house full of children.
But do I miss being exhausted all the damn time? No.
Do I miss being the answer to every question? No.
Do I miss hearing “MOM” seventy-five thousand times a day?
Absolutely fucking not.
There were periods when I literally rationed the word. Each child was allowed ten “Moms” a day. I had seven kids. That was seventy Moms.
Seventy.
And that was me putting a LIMIT on it.
There were some days when I simply could not handle hearing “Mom” one more time. One of my sons figured out a loophole.
He started raising his hand.
Like he was in a damn classroom.
And you know what? Smart kid. He got more of my attention.
To this day, if we are in a room full of people and he wants to say something to me, he will still sometimes raise his hand and it works!
So when somebody tells an exhausted young mother, “You’re going to miss this,” I understand what they mean. But maybe we could stop saying it like every miserable part of parenting is secretly precious.
You might miss parts of those years. You probably will. But you are also allowed to be tired. You are allowed to not savor the tantrum in Target. You are allowed to not feel grateful while cleaning puke out of a car seat at midnight. You can love your children more than anything in the world and still think, Dear God, I cannot wait until you can make your own sandwich.
Those things can exist together.
And here’s the good part nobody says enough: there is something on the other side of all that work.
I am really glad I put the work in then because now I get to enjoy the people my kids became. And I really do enjoy them.
They are funny. Complicated. Capable. Weird as hell in completely different ways. They have opinions I didn’t give them, lives I don’t control, relationships I’m not part of, and stories where I’m not even a supporting character.
And I like that.
I don’t just love them because they’re my kids. I genuinely like the adults they became. And other adults enjoy them, too!
That feels like the payoff nobody talks about enough.
So now I’m in this strange season where nobody needs me every five minutes and I keep looking around like I’ve forgotten something. Surely there is something I’m supposed to be doing. Has the Mt. Everest of Laundry truly been summitted?
No?
Nothing?
Well, shit. Now what?
I think that is what has surprised me most. After spending most of my adult life in motion, doing nothing can feel like I’m doing something wrong. We even apologize for it. Ask someone what they did all weekend and they’ll say, “Nothing. I was so lazy,” as though a weekend has to produce something to count.
I still catch myself doing it. I’ll be perfectly content and suddenly think, You should go work in the yard.
I could.
I’m not going to.
The yard remains. The world keeps spinning. Nobody calls the authorities.
Well, unless the lawn gets over twelve inches. Then apparently code enforcement is indeed called.
Maybe that’s really what I’m learning in this season: I don’t have to fill the space just because there is finally some space.
After thirty-three years of being needed, sometimes nothing is happening. Nobody needs a ride. Nobody is yelling “Mom.” Nobody needs me to find something that is sitting directly in front of them.
And maybe instead of immediately finding something productive to do with that freedom, I can just enjoy the damn freedom.
So to the young mom who is exhausted while somebody tells her to “cherish every minute”: you don’t have to cherish every minute.
Cherish your kids. Love them. Do the work. Take the pictures. Remember the little hands. Have fun with them doing silly and crazy things. And when you are tired, be tired.
One day they may feed themselves, drive themselves, wash their own clothes, theoretically wash a dish, and call their sibling instead of you. You may ache a little for the tiny versions of them.
I do.
But I don’t want those days back.
I like the people they became. I like that they have lives of their own. And I’m starting to like this quieter life of mine too.
Sometimes I can sit in my house, drink my coffee while it is still hot, have absolutely fucking nothing that needs to be done right this minute, and think:
This sitting is my reward. I don’t have to earn it today. I already did.