Waiting

Morning.  I am sitting in my front doorway with Peabody, hugging his small furry body tight to my face.  I can hear a chainsaw in the distance, a small dog is barking, cars hum down the neighborhood’s streets, people talk to each other.  I can’t make out exactly what they say.  I have had so many moments like this it seems like when I look back over my life, I have always been alone.

In my mind, in an instant, I am sitting just near the fence line on my parents’ property, I can hear the wind, the cars on the highway.  The ground, hard yet slippery, with loose topsoil underneath me.  I can feel the tension of waiting for my mother to call.  I can feel the precariousness of having no solid rights to support me.

Then I am at UC Davis, sitting outside Sproul Hall, the cement hard and cold beneath me.  Bicycles tick tick ticking by me, the hum of fans nearby, the murmuring of students talking.  I take a sip from a small carton of chocolate milk, wonder why it tastes so different from chocolate milk you mix yourself.  I am eating lunch outside my next class, which is still 40 minutes away.

Next I am sitting on the floor near the bathroom at the hospital.  I am so tired the air feels thick like maple syrup around me.  My palms, braced against the carpeted floor, are damp with sweat.  The back of my head, my shoulder blades and my butt cheeks brace against the wall.  When I blink, my eyelids choose to stay shut longer than normal 50 percent of the time.  A nurse passes me, taking a second to enquire if I am all right before she moves on.  I answer yes, but in reality, I feel as if I am caught in the travel portion of a very long vacation at which I never arrive.  One floor above me, my father, who has recently had a stroke and who I have come to visit, sleeps.

Snap, I am in my living room, Daryl is half a world away, taking a plate full of food to his daughter while I sit and wait.  Skype makes the computer speakers whirl like something with a cyclical motion has been set off speed.  Impact seems imminently ahead.

Waiting.  My life is composed of waiting, moments waiting, hours waiting.