“You must wait patiently, knowing that you’re waiting, and knowing what you’re waiting for.“ (carlos castaneda)
way back when, almost three decades ago, saltines were my meal of choice. i was waiting for the birth of my first child and saltines were helping me wait – patiently. i woke each day, wondering, wondering. i knew that what i was waiting for would change my life forever, would give different meaning to being here on this good earth, would be a miracle of outstanding proportion. it did change my life. it did give different meaning to being here. it was, and still is, a miracle of outstanding proportion. my girl and my boy – both waited for, with all my heart.
most things in life require waiting. some things require more patience than we can muster. we balance impatience with the force of knowledge that we simply cannot change the time it will take. it takes what it takes. my sweet momma would say, “good things are worth waiting for.” sometimes you need to tie a weight to your toe…to ground you from floating away in a cloud of impatience, to keep you in balance, keep you in grace, to help you wait.
in sweet pink ballet shoes, they flitted across the stage, little girls in plié and arabesque, little frowns of concentration mixing with smiles as they moved into practiced positions. sparkles of light played across the theatre, the spotlights catching the rhinestones and sequins on tutus, the treasured stuff of these little ballerinas. in my mind’s eye i remember my own little girl, hair piled high on her head in a bun, grown-up makeup on her be-still-my-heart beautiful face, as she carefully performed her memorized dance to this piece of music. a moment in time. sweet ballet.
each saturday morning we would sit on the wooden floor of the ballet studio. royanne, the world’s best ballet teacher, would transform these little girls from sneaker-wearing to ballerina in moments, patiently, with great care and a profound love of ballet, teaching and children. the parents would gather in the back, a seeming group meeting with conversation that flowed easily, yet softly. friendships began on that wooden floor in the back of the studio; friendships that have prevailed through all of life’s changes. one of my very best friends, the person my big brother seemed to handpick for me as a brother to stand-in after he could no longer be on this earth, 20, sat on that wood floor those mornings. you just never know where or when you are going to meet someone who will be in your life forever and ever. sweet ballet.
after class ended we would go across the street to jack andrea’s. the girls would order ice cream sundaes and make paper dolls out of straws and napkins. my boy would order chicken or potato soup (the kind of soup race cars eat – another story) or english muffins with saltines and pickles on the side. 20 and i would order coffee and watch this amazing time of life dance, moment by moment. sweet ballet.
slow. slow. when we drove home the other day, we realized how very slowly we were moving here on island. the comparison began the instant we were on the mainland. we hadn’t driven over 40mph for a couple weeks; suddenly we could feel the push, the frenzy to get somewhere, fast, faster. it’s pervasive, that frenetic energy, and the closer we got to milwaukee, the more we could feel it. our heartbeats raced as cars darted in and out of lanes, as horns beeped and drivers gestured impatiently. no one noticed each other. they just drove, destination their only intention.
slow. slow. we walked home the other night. after porch-sitting and having a short meeting, we ambled down the middle of the road. no one was coming; no one passed us. the interruption in quiet would have alerted us to any oncoming car. we shared the woods around us with a deer, who was still, watching us for signs if we were going to approach. our pause on the road and our slow movements convinced the deer to not run, but to stay and just be still. to watch. an eagle flew above us. looking up, there was a moment we recognized that this eagle saw us. the deer, the eagle, noticed us. we were in the world together in those moments. no intention but to breathe the same air.
slow. slow. we are learning, slowly, about this community. connecting the dots, discerning the culture, perceiving the nuances. we are studying this place that is our job – a performing arts center with 250 seats on a tiny island you can only get to by ferry. a step away-away. a place in which we want to elevate artistry and growth. we move slowly, thoughtfully. our intention, our work, the maturing of this place that has been germinated and cared for. a rich garden, a rich forest of verdant adolescence, waiting to flourish. slow. slow.
“the river is moving is moving and i am still i am still. the challenge of the seeker is not to be separate from that you seek. and sometimes as kdot said you have to stand still stand still and let what you seek catch up to you.”
stand still stand still. difficult. every single cell vibrates with the anticipation of movement movement. every single atom. every single frequency. every single. but to stand still. in it all. and wait. we are here. we are the past. we are the future. it is all the same. we stand in it. some of it fades away and some of it catches up. all while we stand. and tremble in not-knowing. and quiver with suspense.
the lake wakes up different every day. our little bay is moody and this pensive morning was not willing to add much color. water morphed into sky which morphed into water and, were it not for hog island and two birds, it would be hard to tell where they each started and ended.
every day we are on island i will take a picture of the morning lake. its hues, its movement, its message for the day.
today, as i look at this photograph with two birds and an island, i am quieted into thinking about the day. in looking at the date, i note that 27 years ago today i lost my big brother. i wonder if he is gazing out at this morning lake with me. i wonder if he looks out on the day, its hues, its movement, the message of this good earth’s day. i wonder if he has snapshots of every morning from heaven.
if you are watching hgtv and they are touting the positives of having a washer-dryer combo all-in-one, don’t believe them. we quickly discovered that the dryer part of the washer-dryer was in name only. unless you have hours to wait and money to toss for the added electricity, the “dryer” is more like a wringer-outer that removes some of the moisture from your laundry.
and so, on this little island, for this summer, we now have a …. wait for it … clothesline. after a trip to the mercantile where we bought line and clothespins, d installed it and voila! we have a “dryer”!!! the breezes off the lake and the sun dry our laundry quickly and dogdog loves to help with the hanging-out and taking-down of clothes on the line. i feel myself channeling my sweet momma as i shake the clothes taking them out of the basket before hanging, lessening possible wrinkles, and again shake the clothes as i take it them off the line, lessening possible hitchhikers. it feels like time-ago. it’s refreshing and pretty heavenly. there’s plenty of time. and the laundry dries.
we have found that we needed to slow down a bit here. we drive slower, for wildlife is everywhere and you must be careful. we walk slower – in the middle of the road – for there are far fewer cars and no frenzy. we have fewer errands, for there are not many places to shop. we see that we will see change slower, for the wheels of progress are big ole tires here, turning slowly as a big tractor down a mottled dirt road. we wave at everyone we go by, we stop and talk, we laugh about our long tenure here – a whopping fourteen days. we know we will slowly become a part of this place. there’s plenty of time.
we were at a new friend’s house high on a bluff in the woods overlooking the lake the other night. we were telling a story and i said something to our host about not doing nutshells very well; she interrupted my apology and said, “there’s no rush. tell the whole story. we have plenty of time.”
you have to plan a little differently with a clothesline. adjustment is necessary. a day which dawns rainy and grey will not be a good clothesline day. and so, you must choose a different day. for there is plenty of time.
every time you think you have it all figured out, life has a way of poking fun at you, pulling the rug from underneath you, making you re-evaluate, maybe roll your eyes, maybe cry out and push back, maybe giggle in abandon.
the island players performed a short at TPAC from spoon river anthology (e. l. masters), a collection of epitaphs spoken as monologues by the deceased residents of the fictional town called spoon river. it is gripping. a not-so-subtle reminder of our brief time on this earth and the absolute into-thin-air-ness of our lives. perspective-arranging, yes, as you listen to the tales of each person, ephemeral, transitory, all fleeting moments in a deep milky way of vast time.
one of the characters, a finely and properly dressed older woman, brags of renting a house in paris, entertaining the elite, dining at fine restaurants, taking the cure at baden-baden, a spa town in germany’s black forest. she returns to her hometown of spoon river, only to realize that no one really cares about where she dined or what she ate or who she entertained or if she took the cure at baden-baden. a sobering moment for her and, if you let it in, another one of those lessons. the kind where you realize that what you do and what you have is – not – who you are.
instead, the dust of us will later snicker, laugh, out and out guffaw at how invested we all were in the things of life that didn’t really count, the things that will disappear into the outer atmosphere of the universe, never to be retrieved. instead, we should chuckle now, realizing that indeed the best-laid plans are only that. plans. that doesn’t make them life. life has its own ideas. perhaps we should just remember that, cut ourselves a bit of slack and recognize how funny it really is that each of us, formed of zillions of random cells, somehow ended up here, right here, right now. for this time.
we watched the movie ABOUT TIME three times this week. it’s one of those movies. well, that and we have no wifi, internet or tv, so movies we borrow from the little island library are our late evening entertainment. even then, we don’t usually watch things multiple times during a one-week span. but this one drew us in.
how many times have you been reminded to live life like this? to live a day like you have come back to live it – the way you should have lived it the first time around….enjoying it, making it full, recognizing its brilliance, knowing that jewel of day will never again actually be repeated. too many lessons along the way teach us these things.
if i could wish upon a star and know that it would come true, it would be to live each day the way i would live it if i could do it over and “fix” anything that might have gone awry. to live it with absolute certainty that it was extraordinary, particularly in its ordinariness.
days. there are none to waste. during those days with moments of angry words, minutes are washing out to sea. in those times of drudgery when you are hoping for time to pass quickly, the hours vanish into thin air never to be lived again. in those times of grief, when pain washes over you and the minutes seemingly creep by, the chance to find any iota of joy co-existing with anguish passes by as you crawl into the next day, exhausted, depleted from losing the day before.
ABOUT TIME was a reminder: live each day like it was the full, final day. how would we choose to live on the full, final day? how would we treat people around us? what would we say to those we love? what would we do?
i remember my dear friend richie at the end of his life. each day he spent on this good earth he was a shining example of this. like all of us, he woke up never knowing which day would be the full and final day. and yet he woke up knowing it was close. people asked him how he did what he did, how he lived his days without regret. he just said, “everything’s going to be ok.” and he believed it. extraordinarily ordinary. every day.
plan ahead, you say? well, we thought we did. we wanted a photograph to document our shore-sitting-sipping-on-bold-coffee moment that last morning on hilton head. we carefully watched the waves and placed our mugs in the wet sand. i stepped back to take a couple photos and voila! the tide is a funny thing…something of which we have no control. and so, the coffee cup dance became the moment and our laughter sated our need-for-coffee.
life, i suppose, is like that more often than not. when i moved away from family to kenosha, the conversation went something like this: “3-5 years and we will be moving on.” it is now 30 years later. 30 years! where did that time go? what about the plan? the tide seemed to have its own way and waves of joy and challenge, growth and grief, and simply TIME have washed over me. the tide laughs in glee.
we try to plan. my sweet momma had a great sign. i wish i had it. but it was something like this:
yet, despite our measuring, our strategizing, our calculating, our PLAN, life seems to take unexpected turns. the waves roll in and the tide giggles.
lists. we have lists of things to get done today, this weekend, next week. so.much.to.do. “…it’s not just romance, it’s not just spark…it’s not just passion, it’s not just flame…” (lyrics)
we are not alone. real life requires lists. and lots of hard work. together. we lean on each other for the challenges. we hold each other through the really tough stuff.
we just came back from being on an island where we heard a story about the recent high school graduation. there were three (3) graduating seniors. (the school has about 72 students, k-12.) most of the people on island went to this graduation. it lasted two hours, with speeches and personally-chosen-songs played by the graduates and a recessional. it is amazing to think about how many unrelated people watched this ceremony, taking time out of their lives to witness this very important moment in the lives of these young people. it takes a village to raise a child. yes.
but everyone knows everyone there, indirectly if not directly. deb recommended to never say anything negative or derogatory about anyone because they are likely related or best friends to whom you are speaking. she added, and i agree, that “we should always live like that.” there is a shirt in her sweet bookshop that already has my name on it and reads:
as we plan our lists and our calendar for this next crazy week, we can see, ever so clearly, that our own village is here to help us. we lean on each of them for the challenges. they hold us through the really tough stuff. it does take a village. it takes each other. together. that is the stuff of real life.
reverse threading 