Each moment is significant.
For example, this line at the post office.
Tomorrow is tax day.
That mom with the two young children.
What she says to them: wait here.
How they look at her.
And they are watching, learning, learning about waiting.
Children are always learning about waiting.
The older woman behind me.
How she chews her fingers and looks around.
Once she was young and then after that she was somewhere in between
like me.
Each line has a memory of another line.
Whether or not the end of any line gets you what you wanted,
the wait is often noted, recorded, reviewed.
Each anticipation of any wait-er has been solidified in the mind;
calcified blocks of
personal stories and vignettes.
How our waiting settles into these clerks,
perhaps to ground their slowness to slow
and then seemingly slower.
Did someone press pause on this moment?
Is it for me to finally notice?
Should I take this time for something significant?
Conversely, sometimes it seems we believe
that frantically looking around at anyone
who will meet our eye will speed up the process.
We are all waiting for our turn.
Life is not waiting for us, but oh how we wait for it.
For it to happen.
For it to unfold and reveal its mysteries.
Right now is always fighting our anxiety with
elongated space between here and there.
Every line in our life is like time passing.
How we wait is telling.
How we wait
is who we are
In each
significant moment.
