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“Relax.”

I heard it clear as a bell - a firm whisper that cut through the dead quiet of the night. He said it only once, but he said it so clearly. In his sleep, my husband spoke the one word that has been torturing me for months. 

“Um. What?” I whispered back, my head slightly off the pillow.

No response. The room remained still while my mind ramped up another notch. My feet shifted under the light summer blanket in subtle annoyance. I know what I heard. He said…relax. 

Minutes earlier, I had been running through students’ names in my head, reviewing the school year; my way of seeking closure on events. It’s the only way I can move forward and get myself into summer mode. When I’d finished with that, I moved on to making a mental summer to-do list. It was the middle of the night and the mental gymnastics was keeping me from sleeping off the effects of a chaotic school year. I tried to focus on the pool of moonlight that stretched across the foot of our bed, like a mermaid lounging in the sun. The moonlight was dreamy and warm. But it wasn’t really moonlight. It was a hot white LED light from the nearby streetlight. For the purposes of trying to sleep, I chose to believe in moonlight…and mermaids. The dog was upside down beside my husband, little tufts of matted hair snuggled down into his splayed belly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any creature so relaxed in my whole life. I rested my hand on his upturned ribcage. Yup. Still breathing. Just really really relaxed. My husband lay on his side, jaw slack and knees partially tucked. His eyelids twitched ever so slightly, the movement barely detectable, like water bugs on a calm lake. Really frickin’ relaxed.

Beneath the breeze of the ceiling fan, I accepted the fact that I was on my own in my agitated wakefulness. I kept my eyes on the fan as I went back to my to-do list for the summer: refinish a chest of drawers, paint one of the kids rooms, rip out the dead cedars, write a short story, blah blah blah. Trimming the matted hair from my dog's belly jumped up the list. 

At some point I thought even the fan looked relaxed, wobbling and whirring, hypnotizing me with its blurry blades. 

“Ah ha! No! You won’t trick me into relaxing.” I thought. I turned onto my side, giving the ceiling fan the warm summer shoulder.

I thought back to an evening at home, some months ago. My eldest son chirped from the couch, “I can’t relax around you. You need to sit.” 

I was buzzing around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, writing reminder sticky notes, wiping things down and generally fussing. All very important stuff. Very. If I didn’t wipe the excess pepper from beneath the pepper grinder, who knows what would happen? The mortgage wouldn’t get paid, infection, unwanted sneezing? A butterfly effect of disaster. Not gonna risk all that. Besides, low-volume repetitive noises that bubble up when puttering in the kitchen is my lullaby. Squeak goes the drawer, phssssh says the dishwasher tray, thwup, says the sprayer as it clicks back into the faucet holder, whoosh whoosh sings the wet cloth as it glides across the granite. Scritch scratch says my nearly dry pen as it scribbles onto post-it notes. My feet shuffle, my nostrils snort in soft, short bursts. Occasionally, I share a giggle with myself as I mutter “there’s the missing lid to the spaghetti sauce jar I’m saving for the day when I have 8 hours to make my next batch of bone broth!”. 

I think I see it now. The ridiculousness of my tightly wound nature; my gears stuck in sport mode all the time. Aside from making others occasionally uncomfortable, and spending precious time on silly tasks that have little impact on my actual life, this unbreakable link to ‘busy’ is keeping me from things that matter.

April 22, 2023, at 7:00 pm in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is where the notion of 'relaxing’ first began to haunt me. I sat in a crowd of middle aged women, all wearing some variation of the same mid length rain jacket, all with our tidy haircuts; not too short, not too long, listening to author Elizabeth Gilbert share stories and words of wisdom. Some nuggets were gold, some of her ideas annoyed the shit out of me, others left me spinning. Elizabeth Gilbert is best known for her memoir Eat Pray Love - a story that sings the praises of living an authentic life. Shortly after getting married, Elizabeth finds herself in the suburbs lamenting the inevitability of the predictable life to come. So she leaves her husband, her job, her life and embarks on a year of travel and self discovery. Bold. Intriguing. The book was a global bestseller and translated into 30 languages and spawned a feature film starring Julia Roberts. You could say it hit home for a lot of women. A lot. Many of us were here now wondering what else she might want to share about the creative yearnings of women and achieving ultimate fulfilment.

I leaned forward as Elizabeth strolled back and forth across the stage, hinting at the life changing advice about to come. My friend beside me was much cooler than me, sitting upright, eyes forward. If she was embarrassed by my eager lean-in, she never let me know. Elizabeth was fixin’ to say something big - and I wanted my good ear as close to her as possible so I didn’t miss it. 

“If we want to change the world…we need to relax”.

Seriously? That's it?

I wrote it down anyway, completely unimpressed. 

“If we want to change the world and start a revolution - women need to learn how to relax.”

Revolution = relax? Hmph.

As it turns out, this notion has been a real mindfuck for me. For months, I kept imagining a relaxed version of myself. The benefits? The drawbacks? Would there be so much pepper collecting under the pepper grinder that I might actually be able to see a pile of the spicy dust from across the room? Gasp! If I didn’t scurry down the halls at work (school) would it look like I didn’t care? A slow moving teacher is the one with one foot in retirement. How could I? If I don’t sand and refinish that dresser, would the clothes at the cottage be left strewn about like a dropped suitcase on the floor of an airport? The benefits were what?  

To do less is to be less. No?

No.

I think she’s right. She begged us to stop referring to female role models as ‘fierce’ and ‘badass’. These words are dripping with notes of stress, aggression and paint a picture of an overall anxiety ridden human - one who is always on. A relaxed woman on the other hand is a woman in control. With boundaries. A woman who is not concerned with the balls in the air but gives her attention to the balls in hand. Anything that drops can be picked up later. Or perhaps… picked up by someone else. Calm is a superpower. Ticked boxes don’t matter if they’re meaningless boxes.

“Every martial artist knows the most relaxed person in the room is the one who holds the power.”    Elizabeth Gilbert

The next day I asked my husband if he remembered talking to me in the night, uttering the command to ‘relax’. He didn’t remember. When I asked him if it was possible he was dreaming about me and telling me in a dream to ‘relax’, as he so frequently asks me to do in real life. He just laughed. Fair enough. We’ve been married 24 years. I don’t imagine I am always the woman in his dreams. Henry Cavill and I have been on again off again “friends” in my dreams for years so he’s entitled to his evening wife, Shania.

My nervous energy cut across the deep REM subconscious of my husband and he asked me to relax. Elizabeth Gilbert, who doesn’t know me, begged me in a crowd of so many to relax. My family has asked me to relax. As the years tick by and one to-do list replaces another, I simply must relax. This is not a revolution I plan to fight, but rather one I hope to welcome. 

I’ll make a list of all the steps to achieving relaxation.

Step one…what is step one?

Ooooops.

Carol Sloan

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