As I Wait

"Just you wait Eli, just you wait, just you wait until your father comes home," those are the lonely words that I longed to hear from my mother, instead of the many others she used to advance the evidence of her superiority to a provocative five year old.  Yet all the same I continued to wait.  And with the waiting I carried the slightly demeaning helplessness, and endlessness that was no less obvious to myself then, than it is now.  One of the more detrimental perils of waiting is the inherent pain that comes from not being fully in command of what happens.  Orphans and sons of the lately more numerous upper-middle classes all feel it one and the same. Because feeling the pain of waiting is as innate to us as crying.

There are different types of waiting, there is the apprehensive waiting, the angry waiting, also the almost jovial waiting such as one feels when waiting to receive a phone call from a long forgotten friend. To call and tell you that they forgive you and love you still. All of these states can of course coincide and mix in any definite combination, however they all fall dramatically short to the one type of waiting I lived through for thirteen years to a date.  And that is the waiting of abandonment.  It is the loneliest kind of waiting there is. It by far surpasses the others in its painful perils.  I'll even venture to say it is almost as bafflingly brutal as waiting for an overdue telephone to finally ring.  And it should be noticed that the latter brings with it no small degree of throbbing heartache and apprehension.  Yet in this sort of waiting the sufferer does not expect a sudden revelation of his desire, but rather lingers on, impatiently waiting for an obscure moment when he will suddenly realize why it is exactly that he is not worth waiting for.

Yet the days and minutes trickled down, and like a spy weary of his vigils, I grew content in the arrogant self-assurance that my father was simply much too busy in worldly events to be worried about someone like me.  Who was I to judge the life of an immigrant, who left his family behind, in the snow of a cold Russian winter?  The funny thing about waiting is that the passage of time does not make the waiting any easier; it but accentuates the pointlessness and futility of the delay that one has already gone through.  Yet to the contrary, with the excruciating passing of time I could almost say I got used to waiting.  I could fall asleep to it, awake to it, I could probably die and be born to it, and many mornings I felt like I did.  At times I could almost claim that I was proud of waiting, as if it was a precedent of sorts, an advantage that I could flaunt before my peers, as if asking them "So, boys what are you all waiting for?"  And they were all waiting for something, no matter how readily they admit to it or not.  Some were waiting for their weekly allowance, be it food or money, while others waited for the weather to get warmer, waiting for the end of the cold Russian winter, waiting like children wait when they sit outside of school. Some were more apprehensive some were active, and from what I gather activity leavens waiting, as constant movement seems to disperse the atoms of dread and thereby making them somehow less harmful. I found myself to be neither.  I was simply waiting.  With an instinctual lack of patience yet in a most concentrated and flexed position, waiting for my revelation, waiting for my father.

Everyone secretly hopes, regardless of what they may tell you. Thus I was no longer waiting, but hoping that I was worth more than the value someone seemed to have placed upon me; hoping that something was due to come of this sadistic delay that was holding up the rest of my life.  I was seven by then, and waiting for his return was already stored in the back of my fiber.

But I suppose I forgive him, now that a few years have passed, now that I have changed my name, my language, and my blood. He came back.  He finally returned, and took us with him.  And as I was getting off the plane in Newark, in my promised land, I had already decided what it was, and that I would love it, and that no matter what I had to relinquish to love it, I would love it here still.  And I surrendered, frankly a lot more then I ever thought I had, the most painful surrender of all being the surrender of my mother, a trade off of sorts, to give her up for him.  I know I would have never traded her away, not even for my promised land, not even for his love.  It was done non-the less.  When going up for a ball in a crucial game, the player does not think of the crushing blow that is about to be dealt to him by his opponent, but rather with a vexing combination of conceit and insolence thinks of the cheerleader that will reward him after.  Thus I concerned myself with nothing, while fate, like a vigilant opponent delivered the hit, taking her away from me, forever.  And just like that in the span of a minute, the waiting got heavier, because now I was waiting alone, without her, without my mom.

I train myself in the art of waiting.  I think of others in insufferable situations: people in prison, or having to fill up the hours in a hospital or an asylum.  And I can't help but scowl at the futility of my effort.  Futile like waiting for that phone call, both so crushing and ridiculous as everyone knows such things do not happen when one waits too keenly.  In much the same way I now wait for her, like I once waited for my father, who recently gave a piece of kwan-like knowledge to console me.  He tells me that life is an emerging process and that succumbing to a kind of impatience, would bring only a constant intervening pain.  I forgive him for his folly, as still with a reinforced patience, I wait.   I wait for my mothers love to return.  Thus I wait every night on our balcony, quietly whispering to myself "just you wait Eli, just you wait."

And as I wait, everyone waits.  American children wait for Santa Claus, the disillusioned baby-boomers wait for another Teddy Roosevelt, and the world waits for Fidel Castro to finally realize that communism is a lengthy comical disappointment.  Thus everyone is waiting, waiting for something lost to return, or the waiting for the end of the harsh Floridian winter.  Among the many inadequacies of the human race waiting is one of the most painful ones, and logic and waiting are bad bedfellows to our eccentric American sensibilities. In spite of it we struggle on, and we know we cannot influence our fate, all we can hope for is to convert our lifelong plight into lasting faith.