This summer, quite by accident, my son and I stumbled into a new bedtime reading routine that has been so nourishing and therapeutic, it’s opened my eyes to a fresh vision of rest and margin. One night, as we were heading into his room, my son pulled a chapter book from his bedside table and told me simply, “I’m going to read this tonight.” I gawked for a moment, feeling a bit unwanted, if you really must know, but then I had to smile. This was a step up the ladder, a big one actually. So, I found a book of my own, and there we lay for twenty minutes or so, reading quietly beside each other. The practice – he calls it “side-by-side” – has continued on and off for the past few months.
And it’s been beautiful. In the near-quiet, I become aware of so many things – the steady rise and fall of his chest, the sound of his breathing and the occasional sigh or sniffle, the scratching of an itch on the top of his head, or on his neck, the rustling of pages turned. I feel his little elbows jabbing into my side, his warmth, all of it. I read beside him most of the time, but sometimes, I just lie there staring off into space and doing, well, nothing. Nothing productive in a world governed by agendas, anyway. What I’m really doing is sabbath. A little rest after a long day of rush and noise and schedules and bright screens and yellow highway lines and stop lights. A little rest. A little Sabbath.
