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“What do you do with your son all day after you pick him up from preschool?”

The first few times I got asked this in person, I fumbled for an answer.

Part of me wished I could share about grand, glorious things, like — oh we did amazing handicrafts and some home learning, I taught him to read and draw and we do sensory play.

But most days, we do very ordinary things.

To say we zho-bo, a Hokkien phrase that means “doing nothing” would be shamefully accurate.

Sometimes he shadows me around the house as I vacuum, tidy, or pick up laundry.

Sometimes we lie on a bean bag on the floor and stare at clouds through our window.

Sometimes he stands at the window and looks down at the street, observing cars and people passing by.

And other times, inspiration strikes either of us and we devise our own games. We make a bowling alley of toilet paper rolls and balls we can find. We pretend play we’re chefs in a no-star ridiculous fusion restaurant. I wait on imaginary tables, and the little chef gets to work on a three-course meal of strawberry chilli dessert, biscuits, and dim sum.

Some days, we get a spark of creativity and make art together. Or bake. Or jam out with my keyboard and his toy instruments, making the most un-musical music only the two of us would appreciate (or tolerate). And yet other days, we’d be itching for the outdoors and head to the nearby plaground or park and while away a good couple of hours.

It ebbs and flows, and our days swing leisurely between doing anything and nothing.

Strangely, doing nothing gave me space and freedom to learn my son. It deepened our bond as we did life together, just spending time together.

It taught him and I to sit and be comfy with boredom. We breathed freedom in the moments we had nothing to fill the time with. We soaked in the slow passing of time, with nothing to hurry for.

And actually, I now find that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Living these free, flexible days? That’s such a luxury — to spend ordinary, almost boring days, doing ordinary, almost boring things together, while plenty of the world spins around us in a frantic hurry.

So the next time I get asked again, “so, what is it that you guys do when he’s home from school?”, I’ll proudly answer that we savoured the gift of doing nothing.

Because in the doing of nothing, a lot was done.

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