To Wait
Here is the text of my most recent letter to students:
We spend so much of our lives waiting: for trains, for doctors, for a phone call, a letter, a dream to come true. We wait in lines or in rooms made just for waiting, with chairs and magazines, even toys and TV and coffee.
Sometimes, the train we’re on just stops on the tracks, and we wait for it to start up again. Or the car we’re driving gets stuck in a line of traffic. We wonder, is there an accident or a lane closure or just too many cars on the road? We wait for movement.
We waited, over the years, for the Red Sox to win the Series. Now they have done it, but we will still wait for the next time. Fans in Chicago are still waiting for the Cubs to win.
We wait for the perfect match—the perfect girl or boy. We wait to see if the stick turns blue or if we will bleed. We wait to find out if she likes us. We wait for our voices to change. We wait for the doctor’s report or the judge’s verdict. At our most desperate, we wait for heartbeats and breath.
One wait leads to the next. For instance, you waited for college. Now, you wait for grades, for classes, for lunch, for graduation, for jobs and families. I send my writing out to editors and agents and wait to see what they will say.
Incidentally, I just left a doctor’s appointment that I waited three months to get. I had to wait on two trains, in line at the registration counter, in two waiting rooms, and in one examination room for two doctors to come and look inside my ears.
We think we know what we want, what we need, what is best for us, what matters. As if, after all that waiting, answers will appear, truths will be told. We will know something new or different—something that changes everything.
And in the waiting, life happens: surprises, unexpected moments, accidents, losses, gains—none of which we waited for, none of which we knew would occur.
While I waited today, I listened to a guitar player in the Downtown Crossing Station. I threw some money into his upturned hat. Two men, on the other side of him, stared at his fingers as the played the strings. “Can you do that?” one man said. “I can’t do that,” the other answered. On the train, a man sat next to me. He opened his legs wide pushing into me. He spoke a language I did not understand. Across from me sat a row of people, each one a different color from the other, each one involved in something other than riding a train: listening through headphones, reading a book, the paper, sleeping. One Asian man, very young and stylish, wore a wool cap and patent leather shoes. A muscular Black man sat with his arms and legs open wide. He held a newspaper, his hands extended on either side. A young woman, maybe Latina, drank tea from a travel mug. I knew it was tea because the tea bag string dangled from underneath the lid. And there I was, the middle aged white woman with a notebook in her hand, sitting across from them.
I wonder about those moments inside the waiting. Those people who sat across from me—in their eyes were whole worlds and relationships and dreams. Perhaps we have crossed paths before, probably not. And if I see any of them again, I won’t recognize them, and they will not recognize me. Those train doors open and close so fast. There is no room for hesitation—no time to wait.
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