NO RETURNS OR EXCHANGES: FATIGUE IS THE GIFT OF THE MATERNAL
A monk asked Kyorin, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” Kyorin said, “Sitting long and getting tired.”
—Blue Cliff Record, case 17
Avoid it as long as possible, then when you’re ready, stop and look at yourself in the mirror. Staring back at you is your new best friend, your steady companion. Say hello to fatigue. It has come to stay.
Like all the living things in your house, it changes from day to day and season to season. After its first few months of full dominion, ruling and wrecking your physical and mental health, it retreats a bit. In its wake, you may not recognize yourself. You have learned many important things. You have learned that sleep is optional. You have learned that time is an illusion and that nothing separates day from night or one day from the next. You have learned to give up and give in. You have learned that you can function far longer and subsist on far less than you ever imagined you would have to. And you have learned the key to eternal youth. Hint: it is not this.
I was not a wife or a mother when I attended my twentieth high school reunion. I wafted into the Marriott ballroom that night bright, shining, and weightless by the choices that had left me unencumbered at the age of thirty-eight. I looked fantastic, and more so by comparison with my classmates, I thought. Most of them were, naturally, raising families and toughing out difficult marriages. They wore every hard day’s night on their faces, hair, and everywhere. An exuberant ex approached, sizing up my full effect. “What’s your secret?” he gushed. I demurred. I was so deluded. I thought (a) there was a secret and (b) I knew it.
Whatever I thought it was, I must have forgotten it between the 1:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M. feedings. I must have misplaced it on one of those ten thousand nights when the fever goes up, the coughing gets worse, or the crying won’t quit. I must have washed it with the whites or swept it up with the mud, crud, and cracker crumbs.
More than the endless tasks and deprivations, it is something else that ultimately wears you down and out. It is the monumental responsibility of parenthood in general and motherhood in particular. It rises up and inhabits you, stealing every moment of self-reflection and rejuvenation. It functions within you as an alternate being, changing how you think, how you act, and what you live for. It renders you so tired, so very tired, that you begin to look and even sound like your own mother. I am too tired to pick you up. I am too tired to play. I am too tired to laugh. I am sick and tired.
A Zen teacher might exhort, “When you’re tired, be tired.” In other words, don’t exaggerate, contemplate, bemoan, or otherwise involve yourself with it. Don’t reject it; don’t despise it. Don’t inflate it with meaning or difficulty. Be what you are: be tired.
Exhaustion is not a strategic spot from which to defend your turf. It’s not the best place to start drawing lines and setting limits. It’s not the prime state of mind for calculations of any sort. It’s not a power position. And therein lies the extreme benevolence of it. Be tired. Be so tired that you will let the troubles and turmoil wash over you. Be so tired that you will stop measuring the length of your hardship and stop looking for an end. Let the encroachments advance. Lose ground. Give up another day and yet another night. Protect, defend, and guide your child, by all means, but in the main, give way.
You will forgo some things for a time—bouncy hair, brilliant eyes, clear skin, good cheer, the intoxication of looking your best—but you will lose nothing that is worth fighting for.
Fatigue is a gift. Like many of the gifts that come to mothers, it is not one you would choose, like a spa vacation, but one you can use, like a humidifier. It is a cure and a balm. Fatigue helps you forget. When you are tired, you let go. You drop what you no longer need and you do not pick it up again. You slow down. You grow quiet. You take comfort. You appreciate the smallest things. You stop fighting.
In a gentler world, the world we wish for, we would all be too tired to fight. This is perhaps the most precious gift of the maternal—a world without striving, a world at peace. In our day and time, it is an unclaimed gift. Enjoy it yourself in your own home when you are good and tired.