(A guest post by Steve Schuler for this sixth day of
Lent).
Home is where I can enjoy waiting.
Dial-up internet was a
blessing in disguise. As a poor graduate student working at home, I
found myself waiting in front of the computer screen for half a minute
each time a page loaded. I wished the wait-time were either shorter or
longer. If it were longer, I could at least read a couple pages of a
book in the interim. But the wait time was just short enough to be
annoying. One day I noticed that my wife had left her Irish tin whistle
on the desk. So as I waited for a page to load, I picked it up and
blew a couple notes. The instrument was simple enough, having just six
holes to master. Soon I found myself sitting in front of the computer
with the tin whistle and an old hymnal, playing one or two verses while I
waited for each page to load.
That was the beginning of my realization that home is a place where I can enjoy waiting.
In
my own house, if I am waiting for a telephone call or for a pot to
boil, I can walk over to my workbench and sharpen a dull tool, or I can
pick up a magazine and finish reading an article I had put aside.
There’s no pressure to do such things. They are merely available to me
whenever I have a few spare moments. While waiting for my children to
get shoes or jackets on, I can pull a weed or two in the yard, or I can
sit on the steps and admire the trees across the street.
In my
office, when I am waiting to leave for the classroom or waiting to be
picked up if my wife has the car, I can organize papers or browse
through book reviews to see what I might like to order for the library.
I can also brew a fresh cup of coffee, put my feet up on a chair, and
and just think. At my parents’ house, which is not the house I grew up
in, I can wait without pressure. I can always flip through one an old
photo album, or in fine weather I can simply lie on my back in the grass
and watch the sky.
 |
| My oldest daughter waiting in the yard. |
In places I call home, I can wait without
agitation or anxiety. That’s not to say I always do wait patiently at
home, but patience is usually easier at home than it is elsewhere. At
home, it is always possible to enjoy waiting.
Naturally, there
are places in which waiting is sheer tedium—in the checkout line, in the
mechanic’s waiting room, in the dentist’s chair. Such experiences can
be endured, but not enjoyed. I may have brought a book to read or have
found an interesting person with whom to chat, but these are diversions
from the otherwise unpleasant experience of waiting away from home.
There are also places where I do not (yet) feel at home, such as the
homes of some relatives, or my church building. When I have to wait in
these places, there is something of an aimless vacancy, a suspension of
mental activity, that seems inevitable even if I have a means to occupy
myself. Waiting in such places is not unpleasant, and I may even be
relatively comfortable, but it is hard not to become agitated while
waiting, though I am hard pressed to say exactly why.
Good
things come of waiting at home. I have kept abreast of books being
published in my field, my front yard has gotten weeded, most of my edge
tools have remained sharp, and I eventually progressed from the tin
whistle to the tenor recorder and have become competent enough to
accompany my wife and father in recorder trios playing Handel and Bach.
Steve Schuler lives with his wife and children in southern Alabama, and
he is an English professor at the University of Mobile.
