To Waiting It Out

They come more frequently now, the days when I feel I can wait anything out. I’m getting closer and closer to having the proverbial patience of a saint.

I can wait for Christmas and vacations. I can wait for new movies to come out. I can wait for my favorite band to come to play at a venue close enough to drive to and small enough to enjoy. I can wait for my birthday. I wait for phone calls and emails, even good news.

My waiting is not filled with anticipation or worry that makes me feel the blood run up and down my arms. I don’t have to distract myself from waiting; I don’t busy myself with tasks of minor consequence. I eat my granola, read the news, grade papers, as if it were a day of not waiting.

Waiting used to be painful. Waiting to be Old Enough for whatever it is was I wanted to do or be--ride my bike to school, go on a date, have a job, fly by myself--was torture, as if someone had taken the hours and minutes of the days and stretched them as thin as they could be but still they held me. Nothing I could do made that day come faster. No wishing made it so.

Maybe I don’t yearn the way I used to. Maybe my soul doesn’t cry out the way it did when I was 8, 15, 23. Maybe after almost 50 years, it’s pretty clear that not much is exciting.

No. In fact, if anything, the yearning is deeper: for a meaningful life, to impact, for justice and fairness. I yearn to be a force for good, to connect, to be honest and real. I wait for moments every day when I can be or do or witness these things. So my improved patience is not for lack of waiting.

Practice. Maybe it’s teaching and the parade of excuses for not doing work that have trained me to simply nod. I cannot react no matter who has died or seem to have died. No matter the string of bad luck: the broken down car, the lost ID, the rain, the wallet stolen, I say not one word.

Maybe it’s winters and learning to stay inside for days in a row. I’ve learned not to look out the windows and if I do, I’ve learned not to look at the snow. I read. I cook. I do anything but wait.

But maybe it’s years of coming to the end of waiting. Finally I am old enough to ride my bike to school. The day arrives and I get on my bike and ride--the cool March morning, the thrill of no one knowing exactly where I am at this moment. But it ends--at school, where this is social studies, nuns in habits and a friend who doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. Or I go on the date and it’s awkward, the food is bad and clearly dates are nothing like the movies. Or I get the job and first night on the job I drop a tray of ice cream sundae glasses on the tile floor on a busy Friday night.  I waited for this? The broken bits shine around me; I stand still and usher people around it. Be careful, I say, broken glass here. Broken, this is all broken.