Waiting

When Creative Nonfiction magazine posted the theme and call for submissions for its summer issue I was inspired.

“Waiting”

I knew so much about Waiting.

There is a detailed and ever-growing chart in my mind that captures the things that I’m willing to wait for (public transportation) and the things that I am not (pasta to boil).

I have measured my weeks in New Music Tuesdays (now New Music Fridays) waiting for new records to drop so I can wrap myself in that new album for days, let it sink into my skin, find the line or lyric that changes me a little bit. Lose myself in it.

I’ve thought so much about how long we waited for fossils to become fuel, Redwoods to grow, for us to become us - even if we didn’t know that we were waiting.

I know about waiting for summer in a wintery Midwestern city, for a beer to get exactly the right amount of cold, for the truncated cherry of a cigarette to burn the soft edge of a finger. For the sun to rise signifying the long end of a sleepless night. 

About waiting for extinction – that of rare birds, magnificent whales, and of our own people.

About waiting futilely.  For plastic bottles to deteriorate somewhere in a Nevada landfill. Or for your dad to get better.

I told my partner that I was going to write a piece to submit for the issue.

“Why?” She asked sadly. “Because you are always waiting for me?”

I thought about the almost five years I had been waiting for her to be good to me. I almost thought about the lies that I had not yet learned.

“Yes. For that reason, too.” I thought.