A New Banned Word in My Vocabulary: boredom.
The English language is so complex, funny how a little redefinition can change everything. Even if it is your own history...
Coming to you snuggled up next to a very cranky, teething one year old, possibly my favorite place to be. Although it’s still August this cozy moment is bringing me too long for chilly fall days to come. I will fight the urge to yearn for the future and instead focus on the present and my words to you.
I’d give my left tit for boredom. Humor me…
Growing up my grandma was good for two things 1) a smoke and 2) something to do. She would make me rue the day I walked up to her and dared to utter those wretched words, “Grandma, I’m bored”. Up next would be a very long list of things that I very much did not want to do, but had just signed myself up for. Sorting buttons in her sewing room, helping with chores around their house, listening to Grandpa’s stories with him…The list went on. I never understood it. I never understood why she was so adamant about us not saying we are the “B” word. I was bored.
Now I am an adult. I am all knowing and perfect (lol, kidding), however I have what we call in my house, sponstabilities. Responsibilities. I think that’s what kind of changes it, specifically living sponstabilities. Like a child. I am not saying non parents don’t have responsibilities! I am saying not having kids changes your perception of boredom. Or when you have kids it the perspective changes? Perhaps even just not being around kids, I just know I didn’t get this lesson until now. I didn’t understand why boredom offended my Grandma so much, until now. Until I had my child’s life depending on my time if that makes sense. It’s because her mind is working in the way that minds who are thinking for more than one person work. So there is no “boredom”, or at least no boredom without guilt.
Maybe this is exclusive to me and my family’s generational trauma and not a universal truth! That is why I am healing it and breaking the pattern for my family and I. I have incessant thoughts about how I need to fill my time with making sure all the doors that I leave open for judgement can be closed before they are discovered. I think my family cares way too much about appearances. I know we do. I was raised being told “I never want you to stress about having to clean when guests come, even me” by my parents and then, the behavior I was witnessing was a parent stressing about cleanliness of their parent, sibling, friend coming to visit. So it was confusing. And I saw my parents get judged by their parents. A lot. I don’t know that my grandparents were kind people. They were, for sure, products of their generation. That generation was the Silent Generation—Google it if you need me to say more to explain how that may impact who my white, middle class living in New York grandparents were, not an excuse, just context— So I was confused about what I should do, as well as having that extra layer of knowing that even if I do my very best to do the “right” thing, it still very likely will not be enough. So every moment should be spent doing things to keep the cracks from widening and opening myself up for shots. Or, it is theft time. Like a cheat meal, time where what I do doesn’t count. Dissociating, binging food, TV, anything.
All this to say: I haven’t felt bored much since I became a mom, and I would give anything for it. Boredom is opportunity.
What got me on this train of thought was my brother in law asking me if I hated being bored. I answered without thinking, “No, I love it”. He was shocked, to be honest I was too. So I elaborated:
What is possibly better than having the time to truly be bored, and allow yourself to do it. Do you realize the magic that comes from boredom!? Any great idea you think of was born out of the painful throws of boredom. It’s all about how to define it. First of all: boredom is not sitting in class wanting to fall asleep. I always thought that’s what it was, and yes classes are “boring” but they are not boredom. The same goes for work. It is a boring task that you are fulfilling, but to be bored is to not have a task. To have nothing to do. To be able to create something to do. It is feeling a feeling verses how some external situation makes you feel. To be bored and to do something boring are two different things.
We have to do boring stuff, that is life. We can look at times when our brains finally check off everything on that “To Do” list as the fucking gift they are. When you can read that book, paint like you want to do more, hell make a silly TikTok. Just create something and share it with yourself like the masterpiece it is.
I said I understood my Grandma at the beginning of this and I do. I do not, however, agree with her. Sorry G-Ma. She saw boredom like my brother in law, but she also combatted the feeling all together. Constantly finding mundane tasks to fill it. Tasks that fill a cup of other people’s expectations. Keeping your house spotless so people don’t know you live there. Starving yourself to make sure no one dare call you fat. Constantly allowing herself to judge before anyone else had the chance. Then follow that with shame. That is the behavior she modeled for her children.
I love my grandmother. She is my namesake. Elizabeth Kelsey is the piece of her that gets to live on. The First Elizabeth Kelsey, we will call her Ibet, had a beautiful heart, but allowed the opinion of the world around her to control her. I know she had a beautiful heart because she was an artist and I believe the one thing that makes an artist, is a good heart. She was judgmental and a coward who never stood up for her family. She was married to an abusive asshole. She said horrible things to her own children. She judged and was cruel. She cut off a child. My grandmother was a racist. It makes me sick admitting it, but I think I should? Highly recommend the book “AntiRacist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi, one of the nine steps of raising an antiracist baby is owning up to racism, so I am going to own up to my family’s. And apologize for it. It makes no difference, sure, they are dead. But this is generational healing. So for the sake of my family’s future:
World if you are listening, I am so sorry and ashamed of the pain my family has caused in its history.
I don’t know a ton about my family’s past, and the sprinkles I do are hints of a darker history that only continues to deepen in hue the further back you look. I have honestly been too ashamed to look into my own family’s history because I was scared of what I might find. And I may find some terrible things. I may find that my grandfather—who was a city judge in Syracuse, NY and put away criminals, and whom I found out after his passing had used the N-word— allowed his judgements to interfere with justice. And I am so sorry. My sorry does nothing to fix the pain that the blood that runs through my veins has caused. I know that. I am going to find out what it was though. “Whys” may not matter, but “whats” do, and I need to know what my family was. So I can apologize for exactly what we may have done. Maybe it’s my inner optimist but maybe I can find a way to make things right too, or better.
Ibet also made quilts. Beautiful, extravagant quilts. She played golf like a legend, but was also humble, like a lady should be. My Grandmother was the only one who really took the time to try to see the world through my eyes. We turned a log in the woods into a vast ocean that we spent hours catching rainbow fish and putting into buckets, using only our minds. She showed me how to be magic. She made the world’s most amazing macaroni and cheese. I would give anything for Ibet’s Mac and cheese once more. She was so far from perfect, but I love her so much. I see so much beauty in who she was, and I am so sorry she had to live when she did.
She had the most incredible laugh. She gave the best hugs, even when she was actual skin and bones, riddled with cancer, still sucking away on the cancer causing sticks. Even with the life-giving oxygen strapped to her face. She was flaw riddled and cruel. She had style. She was the most graceful human I have ever known, even doing dishes was like watching her waltz. I swear the act of signing her name made you hear Vivaldi. I love her so much.
I get to live here and now. I can make it right. I will made it right. I get to heal my family, what a gift. I difficult and painful one, but we all have our cross to bear right? For starters, I’m not racist. That was a pretty easy generational flaw to correct. Don’t really know why it was so hard from the start, but only an insane person looks for reason in the past. I married for love and nothing else. I don’t ingest the same amount of smoke a year as a coal mine gives off. Well tobacco smoke… I am parenting different. It is early to prove this one, but I am, I am doing it different. I won’t say better, yet. I don’t give judgement, nor do I allow others judgements to penetrate me. I am working on this, I am a WIP.
I understand my Ibet, though. I understand that her life was different. Her time was different. She wasn’t living to live. She was living to survive. I am privileged enough to be able to live for the right reasons. And aware enough not to take that for granted.
So in my family embraces time for mess and creativity. Boredom is a blessing in my home. We live on love here.
As always, thank you for you patience, acceptance, and space. I love you simply for reading this, and I mean that.