Waiting (2020 version)

One of my ex-boyfriends had a song I heard him perform only once; the chorus went Wai-hay-hay-hay...way-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay- tinngggg...  It went on.. not easy to sing on key unless you're sort of a yodeler...  but somehow some version of it has been repeating in my head.   Here we are, nearly in unison, across the world-- taking one of those 'breaths' a brilliant conductor can orchestrate and control by simply holding up his baton... while the brass, the strings, the woodwinds-- they all freeze in mid-breath or mid-stroke... waiting.

We spend a good part of our lives waiting; less so in the 5g internet age where responses are immediate-- goods are located and purchased, conversations anywhere in real-time, deals made, interruptions even possible.  When I was small I waited evenings for my father to turn the corner in his business suit-- he shared a cab and walked the last block or so.  Daddy! we'd yell, joyfully... greeting him just before he'd retire to the den with the scotch-on-the-rocks he'd waited for all day.

And now, the good witch in the story says, 'we must wait'... while the batter magically becomes cake, the oats and water turn into porridge, the pasta softens and curls, coffee brews.  Trees grow and fruit ripens, nested eggs hatch with life, babies are pulled from laboring mothers and childhood begins.  We keep ourselves occupied with schooling and tasks-- with jobs and careers and games and entertainment... while nature cycles on and provides us with most of what we expect.

So what now, as the whole world is paused-- not quite in unison-- for what have we waited?  For a new order?  For a universal decree of mourning?  A mass funeral for those families who have waited many weeks without comfort?  A diminished life for those who have been sickened and not quite recovered? Those who have been wounded and disabled?  A vaccine or cure for something that scarcely existed just six months ago?  A medal of honor for those who perished, who gave their lives unknowingly for some kind of cruel science?  Rewards for the medics and attendants who cared tirelessly and often hopelessly for people who were strangers and became intimates? For society to resume its habits and ways, or to resume with slightly altered protocol?  Will people be kind to one another? Has the waiting tested their patience to the limit?

For me, aside from its homophonic twin, waiting had a certain romance to it.  The 'hardest part', Tom Petty insisted, but I disagree.  The diagnosis is worse-- the verdict, the failure to acquit, the end.  We are all here waiting for death, some have said.... life itself is the waiting.

Ironically, people have learned to stand on line with more patience.  Of course, most have phones and social 'pacifiers' with which to entertain themselves.  I bring a book; I read, look around-- enjoy the air.  Things take much time these days; I waited tonight on a long supermarket line to find the price of chicken had doubled once again.  On my way out, I remarked about it to a woman with greying dreadlocks...  But I'll buy you chicken, baby, she said... in this voice that brought on a flood of tears.  No, no, I reassured her-- I'm fine-- just cranky.  We all need a hug, baby, she said... but we gotta wait for that shit! .... and we laughed.

Like those Biblical patriarchs and Greek heroes-- we wait for love, we wait for death, we wait for God to listen and look and reply.  Most of the time, we are clueless and helpless.  Especially now-- we wait for our mayors and governors to advise us, to coordinate a plan-- to be safe.

The tent hospital in Central Park has been dismantled-- just like that, it vanished almost overnight.  Families of those who did not survive here will have no place to pass and remember their loved one.  It is a grass field, once again.  Will children play here and forget the small successes and tragedies that marked this lawn in the month of April?  

I have learned from experience that grief subsides with the passing of four seasons.  My friend whose husband passed away does not believe this.  You need to get by one birthday, one Christmas, one anniversary, one snowfall, one fireworks display, one turkey dinner... etc.  It is unimaginable but it comes-- the day when you forget for an hour or two, you sleep without a dream, you laugh deeply and uncontrollably.

Walking around the Harlem Meer at dusk tonight, I witness people with masks zig-zagging paths to avoid others.  A few men are maskless by a bench, laughing and smoking, sharing food, touching.  Will we ever trust one another enough to stand shoulder-by-shoulder in crowds?  I passed one of my son's former mentors last night and we spontaneously and courageously clasped hands.  It was so human and healing and strange.  A woman shook her head as though we'd violated some civic law.

I am willing to wait for the next version of future... but not with phone in hand, biding my time.  I am hoping to fill this with some kind of energy-- some kind of work, some kind of prayer... so when the baton lowers,  I will pledge myself forward into the next measure, knowing it is likely to be the 'hardest part'.

Waiting

When I was in grade school I couldn't wait to be 10.  Something about the double-digit thing, the way it looked-- it seemed perfect.  I knew everything would be amazing when I turned 10.  At 10, the world did improve for me; I discovered rock and roll.  I had my first cigarette; just holding it and watching it burn slowly was a coming-of-age thrill.  My legs were disproportionately long; I didn't really appreciate my attributes, although boys asked me to dance and even kissed me.   I desperately longed for braces on my teeth; I thought they would make me look older.

Boys required patience.  Crushes were painful and took weeks to cultivate.  A nervous exchange prefaced another long wait-- by the telephone, where there was little privacy and sibling competition.
Sometimes you'd have to wait a whole summer to talk to your young paramour.  He might send a postcard and even the stamp would be magical.

These days love requires less waiting; texting has telescoped the space between us, and made some relationships cheaper.  The waiting, contrary to the song, is not really the hardest part, but the best, in a way.  We have forfeited this luxury of time in the interest of convenience.

Yesterday I was in a funk and walked up through East Harlem, as I often do when I want to blend into the local population.  Daylight hours uptown mostly mothers and young children are on the streets-- also the disabled and non-working.  It always seems there are so many more wheelchairs and amputees there.  A man I often see hangs out on 104th Street;  he is handsome, but has no legs.  Sometimes he is eating.  I wonder if he needs help to use the bathroom… he is waiting, patiently, for someone to come home, for his helper-- a wife, a son or daughter.  He doesn't wave.  Dogs wait patiently in the tenements for their owners to come home.  I walk-- wait on lines, still without a phone, so I can feel time.  I sense the miles up and back, the chatter and the music from open windows, the Mexican vs. Puerto Rican accent and style-- grown men in costumes of sports celebrities, women in loose colorful clothing.  At the grocery store they call me Mami and tell me to Vaya con Dios.  They don't care how I am dressed.  I walk through the Meer and there are men on benches smoking and sitting.  Some of them fish.  I always think of the Old Man and the Sea.  Some of them have dogs who sit patiently beside them, waiting.

Passing the hospital, there are people in the blue wheelchairs outside, waiting for the ambulette or for a family member.  Some are old and some are young.  Some have IV tubes and have turned the color of their medications.  They want to go home, they have finished the daily treatment torment.  They are waiting for the pain to return, or for the pain to subside.  Some look at me with sorrow in their eyes, but most are not looking anywhere.  They wait.  I bless the warm weather.

When I was a teenager I came home and waited for the next day.  We'd watch this show called 'Never Too Young' and the time between episodes was interminable.  The nights were long, the walks to school were eventful and tinged with the anticipation of seeing whichever boy was carrying my books between classes.  The space between things was so full and rich… you dreamed, you invented, you sang to yourself, you wished and longed for things.

My first husband used to go on the road, and these intervals were unbearable.  To be physically apart was unthinkable and we would write and sometimes speak over great distances at great expense… and it was passionate and terrible.  These times have receded like old waves… the longing subsided and other longings came to take its place.

It's politically incorrect to say this, but I feel sorry for women who don't experience motherhood.  This waiting is epic and long.  It is both anxious and peaceful-- it ties every single woman in the world together.. from princesses to African artisan-women to O-lan in The Good Earth who was my first literary version of a birth-giver.  We are blessed with hundreds of days in which to anticipate and wonder, learn to love our new life, to talk to it, to worry about the suffering ahead, whether their hair will be curly or straight, whether they will be happy. And just when you are so tired of carrying this weight… you suddenly do not want it to happen… you want to stay this way forever-- connected, attached-- with the two heartbeats-- you want to prolong the waiting… but it happens, and the days of infancy are so long and difficult and sleepless, and you feel this endless passage of time with an archetypal slowness…

But here we are--- waiting to go onstage now, with children grown, with so much life behind us- and even this time feels foreshortened.  We sit in a doctor's office, waiting for a bit of pain, knowing it will pass, and that we will pass, and our sorrows will pass, even though they are unbearable.  We will no longer be waiting at some point which keeps approaching with almost terrifying acceleration.

My niece is in a waiting pattern.  She is waiting for love, she is texting and tweeting and sending out instagram photos and dreaming of these boys and men who don't really exist but are like digital pin-ups.  This kind of waiting is not good, I tell her.  You must go out and begin your life.  You must find your actual physical space and take your place because these celebrity fantasies and fairy tales do not just happen.  Life is what happens when you stop texting and you listen to your heart.  You must embrace the wait-- the physical passage of time-- the loneliness and the longing and the not-knowing.  Like an explorer, you must suffer the voyage before you are rewarded with the discovery-- you must log long days and weeks wondering if there will even be a place for you at the end of the distance.  You must learn to believe.

I still use public transportation exclusively.  I like the required 'wait' for a bus or train.  I read and think, and use my writer's voice to invent lines and make up songs.  I am conscious these days that my time  is short and the waiting may not be as sweet.   The distance is not as great between points as when I was 10, but without the waiting, our lives are like words without punctuation, without line breaks, without space and without time. The beating of our hearts is the real timekeeper and to fail to listen is to fail to leave space for love to come in--sometimes when we least expect it, even when we fail to recognize it--- there it is, as though it has been waiting forever.

Super-placebo

Mild weather may be diluting February doldrums, but for the hardcore winter sufferers, it's like getting the placebo instead of a bad drug.
I'm no football fan, so Superbowl Sunday for me is a version of a Valentine's Day with no date, but it was almost impossible, in New York City, not to catch some epidemic enthusiasm and old-fashioned American spirit. Not to mention the betting, the bars... for so many, it was better than New Year's eve.. .then the parade... and then the cleanup, and the post-gig let-down. So what is there to look forward to now...I guess baseball season, and we've got Jeremy Lin to distract us from the insufferable Republican bickering. To me, we have the placebo candidates; maybe I'm jaded and old, but the whole election process feels like an audition for Student Model Congress. Or maybe the latest Bravo reality show. Nothing is real-- even the hair dye and lock enhancement. I'm beginning to miss Ronald Reagan.

For the hard-core sports-addicted, the die-hard Giants fans, what can we offer for a 2-day hangover? My son broke up with his girlfriend Superbowl Friday. The game was a bit of a drug for him, but it was like watching through gauze in black and white. Of course I don't have HD and my TV is so small and pathetic, I can hardly distinguish players running around. So I thought about how here I am, sitting in front of the smallish set like a good 1950's-style American, bonding with the non-political majority, trying to enjoy the commercials, trying not to hate Madonna as much as I do, thinking ironically about Whitney's Star Spangled Banner rendition so many years back, not realizing that footage was to haunt me just a few brief weeks later.

But I also thought about non-celebrity people-- how someone was maybe getting married or engaged, someone was about to receive a cancer diagnosis, someone was having a baby, her husband cursing the timing...someone was maybe even losing a baby, burying a pet, tending to a demented spouse or parent, cooking dinner, changing diapers, dying. Someone was robbing the apartment of a family watching the game at a party. Someone was killing. Someone somewhere was being murdered. And underneath my window, to bring me out of my reverie, some kids were outside throwing a football around, unable to keep their dream on hold even long enough to watch the goddam game.

At 5 AM, we'd all binged on the recaps, recaps of recaps, reruns, interviews, repeats of interviews... some were sleeping, dreaming, sleeping it off, having drunk casual sex with a fellow reveller... whatever. Giselle had dissed the team, Donald Trump had come out on her side, Tom looked a little down, but how bad can life be when your consolation prize is the Sports Illustrated cover girl. I didn't even enjoy the game, but I was feeling the slump.

I was in my apartment remembering how it felt when your boyfriend cheats on you, and you obsess all night and finally at 5 AM when you swear you can see the premonition of blue light in the dawn sky, you breathe. You think--- they've done it--- they've maybe done it twice or even three times, and they're asleep, and beginning to anticipate how to greet the morning-after. To slink out, sheepish...to kiss and swear eternal love, to play over their phone messages and regret. To decide how to lie. To lie. Somehow, just knowing it was over gave me a tiny sense of relief. Maybe they felt bad. Whatever; they never feel as bad as I do.

I tried to communicate this thought to my son, but he wasn't buying. Middle-aged insight isn't appealing to a 22-year old. Pain is personal, as most of us have learned. We process it, feel it, medicate or invite it, as we choose. Maybe the only real personal freedom left to us. What I'd really like to tell him is that maybe loneliness is the beginning of something... that so much of life is like the back of a car getting smaller as it drives irreversibly down the road of our past, and we can only helplessly witness this in our present. That maybe some of life is running after that car, or turning around and refusing to watch it.

One day he'll look back and this particular Superbowl, the Giants victory, will be weighted with sadness and loneliness. For Whitney Houston's daughter-- -God knows if she liked football, or will know Cruz who grew up in Newark, her Mom's home town... she will think... my Mom was still here, maybe acting crazy or erratic--- but she was here. I could have told her not to get into that car, I could have emptied the tank of gas.

Maybe these people don't think the way I do... maybe they don't like songs like Mary Jane's Last Dance or say things like 'when blue suede shoes meant something'. Maybe they just talk it out and don't ride the train all night inventing lyrics and looking for the car with the most homeless sleepers so I can absorb their stench and their shadow because I've earned exactly that.

I remember sitting in my infant son's room on a cold January Sunday night, listening to that sweet calm breathing, inhaling the indescribable intoxicating scent of baby, rocking in his chair. I was not marveling at the super-sized 45 point lead the 49-ers had secured over the Broncos. I had no inkling then that for years I'd find myself sharing this night with my growing son, being educated about rushing yards, incompletes, tight ends, penalties and flags. Instead I was wondering about where my husband was sleeping, whether it was important that I know, waiting for it to be over, wanting the placebo-- the way he had the placebo, always... but knowing I'd never take it, because I'd always need it straight up, with the shadows and the curtains and the morning afters and the endless cars driving away down the road.