Sitting and Waiting

I don't wait well.  I can feel the minutes ticking by, one by one, inexorably marking the time I could have been doing something else.  The issue is exacerbated by the fact that I am always early.  If my companions are on-time I've already been there for a while, examining the wallpaper and listening to the conversation of others.

Having friends who are also early presents its own set of problems.  If she's waiting for me when I pull into the parking lot I feel guilty for making her wait - even if I am 10 minutes early myself.  Miss Marjorie and I encounter this issue every time we hike together.  It makes us laugh, but I still try to arrive before she does.  I've failed the last few times .... but I'm still trying.

TBG also believes in timely arrivals.  This is usually a good thing, since I firmly believe that a shared pace makes for a happy life, but there have been issues.  Leaving for the airport with the Cuters invariably led to an argument: if we were to depart at 8am he was in the car, behind the wheel, having pulled out of the garage at 7:45.  And there he sat, waiting patiently...... or what passed for patience ...... tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and wondering where the rest of us might be.  And where were we?  We were brushing our teeth before putting our toothbrushes in our suitcases and we were checking to be sure that Smoochie, the Little Cuter's stuffed pooch, wasn't hiding under her bed but was safely tucked in her carry-on, and we were turning off lights and grabbing a final drink and making a last run to the bathroom and then I was able to stop and think of what I'd forgotten.  This process was not made any easier by the knowledge that Dad was in the car already.  After a while I began to clarify our time-line.  Did he want to be driving by 8am or was 7:45 really more comfortable for him?  All I needed was a specific time frame; we didn't need to best one another by being first to the car.

Daddooooo exhibited the opposite behavior.  G'ma would herd the three children into the back seat of whichever Ford we were driving that year and then she'd begin to holler.  "Where are you?" she'd cry.  He was never watching television or indulging in other time-wasting behaviors.  No, he was just putting the finishing touches on a project in the garage, or loading the remaining leaves into the trash bin, or checking to be sure that the shingles he'd replaced were still adhering to the wall, or he was talking to the neighbors or..... or..... or..... it didn't really matter.  We were waiting, and he was delaying.  Until my sister decided that he was the oldest case of undiagnosed ADD we just imagined it was a power play. designed to make us all recognize that he was the most important member of the family.  Mostly, it was another reason for our parents to argue.  Not surprising, just routine, but upsetting nonetheless.  We never missed anything, but we were often just in time.  I'm sure that's why I'm such an early bird as an adult.


We've dropped friends who were always late, and we've remained friends with people who otherwise annoyed us because we knew that they would never make us late for a movie.  The Norwegian is  never early, but he is always on time.  He checks his car doors and his trunk and his pockets and the ambient temperature and energy and he used to make us crazy until we realized that this was just his own way of being there.  We have never missed a movie or a dinner reservation or been too late for a party or a rally because he was dallying.  He's slow but not tardy, and that is an important distinction.

I tend to race through life.  It's an effort for me to stop and smell the roses (okay, the creosote..... we don't really have roses growing by the side of the road in the desert southwest).  I'm always wondering what's next and I'm in a hurry to get there.  There's something to be said for taking things slowly, I guess.  I don't rush while I'm hiking; I look at the flora and the vistas and the trail bed and I take pictures and I breathe deeply.  But that's a different issue than the theme of this post -- being on time doesn't mean that you have to rush, it just means that you have to plan.  And I am a very good planner, even if I'm not a very good waiter.
*****
I am waiting as I type this post, sitting in the lounge of The Sanctuary, waiting to have dinner with the Dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University.  I'm an involved alumna, and he's in town for a meet-and-greet with big donors (one of whom I am not) and I've been invited to dine and chat over food in one of Phoenix's fanciest venues.  Of course, I arrived an hour early.