The dark, deep wood
I had a week off last week. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I’m not suggesting that childcare isn’t work. It is. But for the purposes of this piece of writing, it was a week off from singing. It wasn’t really by design, but my other half was away on tour and it was half term with a bank holiday Monday, so I was fielding the toddler and the dog alone, no classes, no nursery. Historically, these have been fraught times for me, ‘solo parenting’ looming large like a threat, a sentence to be served. This time, I decided to take a different approach and just focus on being with my son (and the dog), and, crucially, as much as I possibly could, to just go at his pace.
His pace is driven almost entirely by his curiosity, or by what feels good physically. He loves to run, not really to get anywhere, just to feel the sensation of it through his body. I can tell this by the absolute abandon with which his limbs fly ahead of him, off to the side. There’s none of the sad, cramped control of adult joggers (me) in their Sweaty Bettys (also me) or carefully counted, controlled breathing. He just throws himself forward, running until he has to stop, totally unselfconscious. I want to sing like that.
But mostly, he is slow. We can be just setting off on a walk, and before we’ve taken more than a few steps, he will need to stop, utterly absorbed by the dusty gravel on the ground. This investigation of the ground could take twenty minutes, or more. He wants to touch it, to fill a little plastic pot he’s been carrying around with him, tip it out, tip it into my hands, into my pockets. Find perfectly sized and shaped stones to put in his ears and tell me, ‘Mama, like headphones!’ ‘Yes!’ I say, before explaining to him that we don’t put stones in our ears. But still, I wonder at his ability to make connections like that. He stopped to peer into the bushes at one point, and as I fought back the instinct to hurry him on, he turned round to me and said, ‘Look, Mama, the dark, deep wood!’ Eyes front, ploughing forward to get back to the car, I had seen only bushes, and barely seen them at that. He saw a whole magical world opening up in the hedgerow.
I have lived the last week at such a different pace of life to the one I find myself in normally. Normally, I am chasing after a ‘work life balance’, spinning plates, juggling everything. I struggle to focus, to make connections, to take risks. I’m too caught up with the ‘what ifs’, the possible consequences of dropping the ball somewhere. In my great hurry to make time for everything, I have time for nothing.
This week, I stopped trying to do everything, all at once, all the time because I knew I couldn’t. A toddler won’t wait to pick up the sharp knife, or to try and stir the food cooking on a hot stove while you finish sending an email, so I just had to be with him. And what I found as I leaned into this reality instead of resisting it is that slow can be amazing. Not doing everything can be amazing, because when you stop trying to cram everything into every minute, it leaves space for new things to find their way in. This should not have been news to me, I’ve experienced something similar each time I’ve left a job without having a next thing pre-planned to go on to. If you dare to leave space unaccounted for, unpredicted, magical things can creep in, things which could never have been summoned ahead of time. Spending time with my toddler this week was a slow-reveal reminder of that.
So today, despite not having done any of the normal life admin for the last week, despite not going for a run, making it to a yoga class, or even really having a minute to ‘do’ anything for myself, I am coming to my creative work refreshed, and focussed. I am practising, yes, and I am learning new music (more on that later, exciting discoveries today), but I am also letting my mind wander. I am writing. I am not trying to do everything.