Sweet Nothings

Some weekends are full of nothings, and others are full of such craziness we wonder whether we had a weekend at all.

This weekend was mostly made up of taking care of things around the house. And yet that in itself was a respite from other, usual grinds, some usual have-tos of work and even family obligations. For us, that's accomplishing a lot.

The Hubby recently received a doctor's orders to rest more often to reduce his stress. This is a good word, but it's also kind of a joke when you've been raised to believe your worth is measured in so many coffee spoons of productivity. So we're trying it out, trying to be more deliberate in our time and rest; making sure we're doing what we love, what we want, what we envision.

So to begin his rest, the Hubby worked on the ski boat all day Saturday. And yes, to him that qualified as rest.

He tinkered and puttered and sweated. He huffed over fixing a soft spot on the boat's floor. He grunted over vacuuming the seats and pulling out last year's junk of old water bottles, sunscreen, and old food to throw away. He organized the skis and life jackets. He fixed the trailer's old flat tire and haggled over pricing with the tire guys.

He must have been out there, oh, say six hours? Just puttering, just plunking away at it all.

I occasionally checked on him, bringing water and juice and asking how things were going. He lit up like a birthday cake as he told me what he had fixed and what he had figured out. The old-man's stress of work and responsibility pulled up like a shade, revealing what looked like the face of a 17 year-old boy doing what he loved, loved, loved-- getting a boat ready to take out on the high seas of Percy Priest and Center Hill Lake.

While I watched him, it was if working on the boat was kind of like his personal metaphor for all masculine adventures and desires--the thing to conquer and a story to bring home.

At the end of the afternoon, as we walked inside to get ready for supper, he looked over his shoulder at me.

"Um, thanks," he said softly.

I had been painting and gleefully hanging up pictures inside all day. I hadn't helped him other than to bring out a water bottle.

"What for?" I asked.

"For...for letting me do that," he said. "To just spend time on something that wasn't that important."

I knew what he meant; that tinkering on the boat didn't put money in the bank or food on the table. It wasn't "important" in that sense. But if that's the only definition we have of "important", then we're screwed up.

"It was important," I countered. "Because it was important to you. And you love it."

And that's reason enough.

C.S. Lewis once described friendship as unnecessary, "like philosophy, like art." They're things that aren't essential to survival. But what these things do accomplish, Lewis said, is give us meaning. They are things that remind us who we are, what we love, what we live for.

The Hubby doesn't "live for" the boat, but I know it kind of reminds him what he does live for-- adventure, companionship, nature, challenges.


It was a reminder that sometimes the seemingly "sweet nothings" we do are so much more than just a break or an "unimportant" hobby. I don't know, but it seems like they more often remind us of what actually is worthwhile and worthy of our time and helps us be who we really want to be.

I look at the peaceful face of the man who's worked on a boat, and I can't think of anything more important than that.