"The Art of Waiting"

 

Subliminal artwork on watching your time?
David Chapman, artist

         Punctual people spend a lot of time waiting. I haven’t figured out yet why doctor’s offices and dental office receptionists state firmly, “Arrive ten to fifteen minutes before your appointment” when they know the schedule consistently runs at least half-an-hour late. Because I don’t want to be the cause of any inconvenience, I arrive promptly at the assigned moment where I then sit and wait for almost an hour.
         Punctual people wait on friends and family. We arrive at the time designated on the invitation for a party and end up setting up tables, icing birthday cakes, or running a vacuum as the host and hostess (known for their lackadaisical approach to everything) takes a quick shower. They always look bemused as they ask, “Would you mind?” Although tempted to say, “Yes. I’m a guest, not a maid,” I’ve always bit my tongue and pitched in to get the final preparations complete for the guests who arrive “fashionably late.”
         Punctual people arrive at mandatory meetings and get the choice seats because the room waits in emptiness. I always hated the principal who delayed starting a meeting until the majority of the faculty sauntered into the cafeteria or library. My favorite administrator demanded butts in seats at a certain time, started her meetings at precisely that second, and had another administrator note down who strolled in late. Many of my peers hated her approach because they felt she wasn’t treating them with “respect.” I never could figure out how coming to a meeting five or ten minutes late (or later) should call for anything other than a reprimand.

         Punctual people learn coping strategies quickly. My husband, the only punctual child in his family, spent plenty of time sitting in the car while he waited for the rest of his family to show up. He sang songs to himself, wrote lyrics in his head, and perfected his daydreaming technique. I’m certain this practice makes him a better artist today. Once I knew which friends or family members dallied, I learned to bring along a book. I don’t know how many times I’ve pulled up in front of someone’s house, on time, and had to wait. By escaping into a paperback, I turn a possibly stressful situation into something pleasurable.
         Punctual people find other punctual people. It doesn’t take long for someone like me to cultivate friendships with other people who respect time. I realize that people who run late can be on time when it’s important to them. Once I know that their tardiness is a general disrespect that they hold towards other people, I give myself permission to pull away from these individuals. When I discover that a person even uses time as a means of controlling and manipulating me, I begin avoiding invitations or events with this person.
         Punctual people call on the rare events when we do run late. At work, I’d email my administrator if I had a conflict with her meeting with the specific reason for my tardiness. If I’m running late to rendezvous with a friend for drinks or dinner, I call or text immediately and give an accurate ETA. If I get stuck in traffic, the electricity goes out, or the dog throws up on my outfit, I take a moment out of my time to notify the person who will end up waiting on me. I cannot even begin to count the number of times someone hasn’t shown up at the appointed time and not bothered to call. I’d like the option of saying, “Hey, let’s just forget it! Maybe we’ll get together another day.” Instead, I find myself sitting on the edge of the couch in my Sunday best waiting, waiting, waiting.
         Punctual people get labeled as “Type A” and uptight, but in reality we simply have manners. We’re able to put the needs of others first. We respect their time as well as our own.

Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
             
  

"Blending in Marriage"

First picture of us together!

  

            After thirty-two years of marriage, friends often query, “How did you stay together so long? What’s the trick?

                I usually shrug my shoulders and shake my head, “I don’t know. Lots of love, but sometimes you fall out of synch with each other. The love may not feel as overpowering as it once was; yet if you wait it out, it comes back stronger and better.” I’ll pause for effect, and then continue, “You have to be friends as well as lovers. And you have to be willing to give up some of the things that are important to you as a person in order to reach for what’s best as a couple. Marriage is never easy—but nothing in life is, right? You’ll both feel anger, frustration and hurt. Own the negative as well as the positive. Always pull together when there’s a problem instead of heading in separate directions or relying on someone outside of your marriage to ‘fix’ things when they go wrong.”

At the Leakey cabin

            One of the tricks of marriage is taking two separate lives, with different upbringings and experiences, and blending them together into something wonderful and new. In the early years of our marriage, we made conscious choices of the things we liked or disliked about our childhood. For example, I hated that we moved every two or three years. I wanted to settle on a city or town, sink in roots, and build a life in one place. That didn’t matter as much to David at first. Later on, when I started looking for a bigger house, it turned out David rooted more deeply than I did; and so we added on to our home instead of moving.

Dinner with friends

            Our biggest area of contention those first years? Keeping house. I grew up a clean freak. Baseboards and door trims got a white glove inspection when we lived on base, and I transferred that tidiness into my adult life. Many of our early arguments revolved around housework. David always pitched in, but did such a horrible job that I ended up redoing many of his chores. After one explosion on why he didn’t clean something correctly, he admitted that he rarely did housework growing up. His bungling attempts, which I misinterpreted as a passive-aggressive dodge of chores, turned out to be total lack of knowledge of how to get something spiffy clean.

            When David and I had been married only a few months, he asked one night, “What do you do to the sheets?”

             “Sheets?” I echoed, puzzled.

          “They always feel so smooth. And they always smell good. Do you do something special with them?”

             “No. I just wash them every week."

           David paused, “Oh, that’s it, then. We didn’t wash our sheets every week. Sometimes more than a month would go by.” He made similar comments on the towels that never became cardboard stiff or smelled sour. Although all of David’s clothing when we first married fit into one paper sack, I was shocked to learn that he’d been told to turn dirty underwear inside-out and wear them a second time!

          These differences in upbringing caused friction during those first years. I couldn’t understand why David didn’t just jump in to clean something, often forgetting that he truly didn’t see that something was dirty because his level of tolerance was so much higher than my own.

            Eventually, we divided house cleaning and yard work not by the usual male/female divisions, but by what each of us likes to do most (or least hates to do). David prefers “picking up” or straightening up clutter. He likes to vacuum, cook, and clean the kitchen. I prefer dusting and laundry. We tackled grocery shopping together until recently. Both of us like working in the yard. Usually David will weed-eat while I’ll mow. We team up for clipping hedges, and I love to piddle in the garden

            Blending occurred in many other areas of our lives. Even after all of these years, we’ll sometimes find ourselves discussing a difference (yes, they still exist) and figuring out the best way to fuse two ways of viewing something into one solution. During this past year, we’ve had new challenges and changes that could strain a marriage; yet we seem to have mastered this blending skill. And frankly, it’s the mixing and merging that makes life interesting. 

Anniversary #45!

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

“Midnight Musings”

 

“We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe- some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.
But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court.”
―Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

 

            I know the difficulty of law enforcement officers. They go, sometimes blindly, into situations that scream danger. However, my father took great pride that he only drew his gun once while on duty--at a distraught, suicidal man who was threatening to kill his entire family. Dad talked him "down" and the man got the help he needed. Dad taught me that his job required the ability to quickly assess a situation and to do his best to reduce the possibility of violence. This skill requires constant training and a mindset that the officer must deescalate a situation.

            I know, first hand, how families of officers feel and deal with the stress of this career. If the phone rang in the middle of the night, I'd bolt out of sleep and say, "Dad's been shot." That was my greatest fear.

            My father went into law enforcement late in his life. He was the oldest man to ever graduate from the sheriff's academy for his county! He honestly liked almost everyone he met, and the people under his care respected and trusted him. Because he maintained the same patrol for many years, he built a personal relationship with the residents and business owners in his area. Maybe our police force needs to revisit the importance of the "cop on the beat," the cop who lives in his or her neighborhood.

            Before he retired, Dad worked at the county jail and taught GED classes. He prided himself on having a high success rate of students getting this diploma. Over and over again, he stressed that many of the inmates with whom he worked came from poverty or had little education.

            Now I know that many, many of my students snubbed their noses at the opportunities offered to them through public education. They were, after all, children; and unfortunately children make mistakes that impact their entire lives. Most of them had parents who also started their pattern of poor decisions early in life. Generational problems weave themselves into the very tapestry of a family history and become the knotted threads that all of us must untangle. People who don’t have this type of family dynamic find it difficult to comprehend and easy to condemn.   

            We have fractures cracking through the structures of our society. What if these foundations fail? What happens if we hold distrust towards those who should protect and serve? What happens when we feel disenfranchised and disillusioned?

            I can spend the rest of my life listing the problems within our society, but solutions begin when we embrace differences and walk in another person’s shoes. We can talk about poverty, drug abuse, and violence in homes and on the streets. We can point our fingers and place blame on almost everyone and everything. But until we learn tolerance, we will continue to disintegrate into fragments.

 

 Copyright 2015 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman          

             

 

 

“Not Just a Sandwich”

         The women who live across the street from us built a beautiful wooden front porch and placed matching rockers, side-by-side, on their inviting veranda. Every day, their two cats lounge in this area until they decide to cross the street and sit smack in the middle of our front yard, sending Bridget and Koi into a barking frenzy. Once they know they’ve disrupted the dogs’ day, they saunter back across the street. This intrusion into my day marks the only impact having lesbian neighbors has upon my life.

These women do not threaten my property. Their well-kept home doesn’t detract from our neighborhood. They mow the yard and trim the hedges. They keep the house neatly painted, have huge plants on their new front porch, and sweep the leaves from their driveway every fall. They live a simple life just like everyone else on our street.

         These women do not threaten my marriage. If the laws changed and allowed them to marry, so that after twenty years together they could have the same legal rights that David and I enjoy as a couple, it wouldn’t ripple into my life in any way. But their lives would change for the better.

These women do not threaten my ability to hold onto personal beliefs. They smile when they see me and wave with friendliness. They don’t ring my doorbell to hand me a pamphlet and try to convert me. They simply want to live their lives happily and openly.

         These women do not threaten my family. Having the right to publically and legally declare their love and commitment wouldn’t take anything away from my family. It may add one more drop to the tolerances that I hope our society fosters.

Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman