On stillness

I sit. I watch my mother sleep.

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” -Pico Iyer

Still. This is the best word to describe my week. After a tumultuous and busy February, my pulse dips as I sit cross-legged on a red couch and take shallow breaths.

Four days ago, my mother had surgery to remove a benign tumor that was pressing against her brainstem. After checking her in for surgery at 6 a.m., I waited in one room after another for twelve hours, only taking breaks to walk around or grab a quick bite to eat.

I’d brought a book, my computer, work, editing, writing projects, and more, but as I waited, I realized I could only truly focus on the task at hand. Sit. Shift. Wait.

Mom’s healing well. I’m watching her sleep, wondering if I should wake her up to take her pill. She has a mean headache, and the left side of her head and face are bruised, but whenever she wakes up she makes a joke about how exciting the day will be—she’s going to have beef broth and a handful of peanut butter Puffins—before falling back asleep. A few minutes later, her phone dings, and she sleepily asks who Ted Lasso is. When I shrug, she dozes off yet again.

I feel useless in a way. We’re in her house now, and she’s cozy. She’s no longer hooked up to IVs and machines, but the waiting feels the same. I can’t do much (aside from writing this blog, to be fair). There are no dry-humored nurses to trade glances with when my mom jokes and the silence is oddly confrontational. More so than meditation.

This confrontation is augmented by the two sets of green eyes perpetually fixed on me. Mom’s overweight cats might be wondering when the action is going to happen. Or, maybe like me, they’re just still. And I’m just still enough to notice them for once. We watch each other for a while.

Caretaking, even if only for a few days or weeks, can be confrontational because it forces us to remove ourselves from deadlines and, therefore, time. Without time, there’s no striving. All the doing is on pause. It demands presence and alertness, much in the way illness does, only without the distraction of pain.

So here I am. I clean. I fetch pills. I answer questions. But mostly, I just sit. And time doesn’t really matter. The to-dos don’t consume.

Sounds boring, right? It’s not.