on work, rest and inhabiting a pregnant body

every day around noon i turn off the phone, lock the door, walk away from the lunch mess, tuck ben into his bed, and take a nap. thus rejecting my one shot each day to "really" get something done while ben sleeps. all morning, i plan to throw back a diet coke with lunch and then run around and do chores during that hour. and each noon, having struggled to get ben to eat something other than cookies, having somehow trashed the kitchen, having forgotten to drink the coke, i lumber up the stairs and drop like a rock into bed. for two minutes, while falling asleep, i kick myself for being slothful. then my baby kicks me, and i think, forget it. my body is doing extraordinary feats of strength every moment of this pregnancy, and besides i'll never sleep again once baby wally (not his real name) is born. might as well be the good little napper god made me to be.

but it's hard to live slowly in a culture that values productivity, efficiency, and speed. and not just the culture, mind you, i value those things. but i just. can't. do. them. not right now. and i'm trying, not very successfully, to make peace with my limits. my new strategy is to think of slowness as a meditation. sort of a brother-lawrence approach. practicing the presence while peeling the potatoes, literal and metaphorical, in my life. i used to try and cultivate restfulness while being very busy (in my past life of teaching) and it seems harder now to practice restfulness while being very still. weird.

being pregnant is being a shared space. maybe if i think of my slow/stillness as an act of hospitality to my child, that will silence the inner voice yelling at me to get something done. in the meantime, it's 12:19 pm and i'm late for my nap.