Waiting

April 10, 2013

Waiting

The single thing I do least well among all my life situation and issues happen to ask of me.

But it was always true, back in the day, those heady days when I used up a bottle of Mitsouko in less than seven years.  When I wore high heels and elegant suits (always keeping my jacket on, so i wouldn't be mistaken for a secretary) and claimed I never flirted though my credits were impressive.

Today, most of my waiting is to get a medical report. What fun!  And yet the decades have made me a slightly--very, very slightly--better "wait-er" than in years past. Experience taught me that staring at the phone does not, in fact, make it ring. Going into "new mail" does not make the single one I want to see, appear? What I've learned to do is to keep busy. That's such an old trick. You can't lose a negative activity or habit  unless you substitute a new one.

Given my total disability when it came to waiting, I have substituted not one but two other activities. There's keeping busy--which to me means either writing or doing laundry. And there's my fail-safe remedy to cross any mountain: I pray. Not for God to hup (spelling!?!) to and help me: She knows when to do that without any nagging from me. No, when waiting, I pray simply to stay focused on the fact that whatever it is I am waiting for will not change my life. Or will.

So I might as well stay sufficiently calm to handle either outcome.