The Sunday that didn't try
A photo essay from a slow weekend that taught me what rest actually looks like.
The rain arrived before six and settled in as if it meant to stay. I know because I lay listening to it, and Charlie, who usually treats the sound of me waking as a starting gun, lifted one ear, thought better of it, and went back to sleep.
That was the first decision of the day. He made it, and I followed.
If this day were a set of pictures, they would be small ones, and nothing much would be happening in any of them. It took me until evening to see why.
The morning
By half past seven there was steam on the kitchen window and the garden behind it gone soft and grey. The kettle took its time and I let it.
Tea went cold on the back step because a currawong was working through the wet leaves under the bottlebrush and I wanted to see whether it found anything. It found nothing and did not seem to mind.
The washing was still out, soaked past saving. I looked at it once through the glass, felt the old pull to deal with it, and let the pull pass like weather. It was having a second rinse. It could wait.
The afternoon
Around two a thin strip of sun came in, low the way it is in May, and began its slow crossing of the floorboards. Charlie went with it. Three times I looked up from my book and he had shifted further west, following the warmth without properly waking.
I read the same page twice and did not mind. At four we walked to the bend at the end of the street and back, and that was the whole walk, and it was enough.
What I noticed by evening
With the lamp on I tried to work out why this Sunday felt different. The answer was uncomfortable. On other rest days I have been busy resting. There was the right blanket, the planned bath, the checking every hour or so of whether it was working. A day spent trying to rest correctly is still a day of effort. It has a goal, and a goal has progress, and progress has to be watched.
This Sunday nobody was watching. The rain decided the morning, the dog decided the pace, and I was somewhere in the middle of it.
Deciding once
If you want to try it, the practice is one sentence, said once, out loud. Before your feet touch the floor, or while the kettle works, say: today does not have to add up to anything.
Saying it matters, because the alternative is renegotiating with yourself all day about whether you have earned the sitting down. Decide once, in the morning. When the pull to be useful arrives, and it will, remind yourself the decision is already made, the way you would remind a young dog the walk is over, kindly and without reopening the discussion.
The washing came in on Monday. It was fine.