THE HAY IS IN THE BARN

The tricky art of resting

A few nights ago, my son woke at 11:30pm for a 30-minute tantrum followed by four hours of definitely not sleeping.

I assume these fits are protesting the tough reality of having a two-and-a-half-year-old mind and body. He’s experiencing hunger, growing pains, molars bludgeoning their way in, and a great and looming fear that the Polaris of his parents might gutter out, give way to the darkness (we try not to), and leave him spinning alone through an unending night.

I’m someone for whom the uncomplicated, deep sleep that my husband and daughter have a talent for is basically a foreign language. I can speak this language, poorly, only while taking prescription drugs, so I cannot fault in my son’s struggle. That is, maybe at least I shouldn’t be too surprised at it, and I probably shouldn’t waste time resenting in him what I can’t seem to wrestle down within myself.

What I feel, though, when I wake to his urgent pounding on the door of his room, the wailing and screaming, and an alarmingly increasing vocabulary about frustration, worry, loneliness, pain, and fear zinging through the baby monitor wires, is something quite similar to what he’s expressing.

I’m pretty bummed that I myself have never really sorted this sleeping business out. I feel a helpless anger, too, at the terribly complicated night— that darker, stiller time that asks me to stop doing what I’m doing and come to rest.

*

“I WILL DO IT / I AM NEVER GOING TO SLEEP EVER AGAIN SO WHO […] CARES,” I yelled to my sleepily mobilizing husband. I grappled some extra layers onto my body for whatever was going to happen and released the Minotaur from his room. We tumbled down the stairs together, the child wailing and me seething, towards whatever was going to happen next.

That turned out to be many hours of wakefulness. But first, I had to do whatever I could to improve the situation: there was medicine for his teething (Spartacus vs. the groggy 39-year-old = Baby Motrin all over our clothes and the floor), some whole milk I prayed would send him into a calorie coma, and a deeply ungraceful flop into an oversized bean-bag together. Then the long, wiggling slog towards rest while Mr. Rogers and David Attenborough tried placidly to help us.

Interestingly, the long stretch to 4am was completely bearable: my son’s damp head against my chin; the child’s constant cheering for crayons, tigers, mushrooms—whatever came on to the screen; his plump hand patting my clammy leg; his noisy sipping and the little puzzles of his whispers.

I had a lot of time, between weird half-dreams in which I was trying to ferry my children across the Russian steppe in a single, yellow umbrella stroller, to consider a new/ancient truth: what I can imagine is usually far worse than what is.

*

I am finished with my training for my first ultramarathon. I’m two weeks out, and now my job is basically to sit tight and figure out how to trust that I’ve done my job. I have to figure out how to believe I am actually prepared to run 50 kilometers, nonstop, across the Delaware Water Gap, climbing a total of 2600 feet in elevation as I go.

This period of pre-race rest in the training interval is called the “taper”. In my case, it means that the 50-mile weeks are over. Now I have to figure out what to do with my habit of hard work, besides the recommended stretching, foam-rolling, shorter runs, and gentle cross-training.

For me, it’s easier to go out and run more miles than it is to believe that I have done enough already. Put another way, it’s easier for me to keep trying to get better than to trust myself to be enough. It’s hard to believe that what my body needs right now, more than extra work and more miles, is rest and recovery.

In a spasm of concern that I’m losing my fitness and that it all will have been for naught (a common fear among newbie taperers— I’ve only done it a handful of times before, and never for this long, and never after a final training run of almost 30 miles), I wrote a post in an ultramarathoner group online asking what exactly I should do in order to— wait for it— taper better.

Everyone who responded, every last person, said something to the effect of “um, don’t do anything. That’s the point.” A few encouraged me to enjoy it, eat pasta, go for hikes, etc. Some, recognizing that chomping-at-the-bit feeling, recommended short runs, and allowing just a little intensity (speed or hill-work) here and there to “tune up” the muscles for the start.

My favorite reply by far, though, was from a person who simply dropped the phrase, “the hay is in the barn.”

*

I just found my underwear. So many pairs had been missing that I thought one of my kids must be flushing them down the toilet. Then, when I was emptying out my “purse” (apocalypse go-bag), I found four clean, nice pairs, crumpled, huddled at the very bottom rather hopefully.

I am apparently so oriented to preparation and readiness that I unwittingly stole half of my underpants from myself and reallocated them to an imagined future. It seems I am a human very much in need of the “taper mindset.”

Interestingly, though it’s a challenge for me, learning to trust my past self to have prepared sufficiently also makes it easier to trust my future self to deal with whatever actually happens--whether it be 50k or an unwanted slumber party with a freakishly strong toddler.

I’ve built layer after layer of muscle on my tired, aching legs, and now it’s time to just stare at it all and admire it while it rests in readiness. I’ve painted my toenails a soothing conch-shell pink, which I’m calling “taper pink,” to remind myself of this odd, necessary reality.

There will always be more to do, to learn, to accomplish, to prepare, to get done, to experience. It’s a rare moment, though, when I stop and say Wow, this is … enough. That’s worth requiring of myself, now and then, especially after and before periods of momentous effort.

So right now it’s time to put my thumbs behind my suspenders, tip back on my heels, and regard the large, perhaps gentle night.

There is, after all, a great deal of hay in the barn. I may never know how or when I’ll need to use my supplies. But sometimes I get to know how deeply they suffice.

“Aftermath,” toddler on beanbag, 2021