We wait.

We wait for a holiday, a vacation, a break, a change, a movie to find its home in the Redbox. We wait. Impatiently, we wait. We sigh, we tap our foot, we moan about long lines, days of the week, seconds on the clock. We wait and we wait, and we don’t realize that in the grand scheme of things, all this slow waiting is really time flying.

When I was a child, I remember waking up for school, brushing my teeth, and dreading the long day ahead. I looked in the mirror every morning, waiting for something.

I waited to get through my ugly, awkward phase in 8th grade. I waited to get out of detention. I waited to graduate high school. I waited to find the right guy by dating a lot of wrong ones. I waited. Time didn’t fly. Time was stagnant. I looked in that mirror and thought time dragged on slower than a slug on sleeping pills.

Like any other kid, the big wait was Christmas.

I had a large family back then. I can still see my grandmother’s home at Christmas dinner, the roaring of laughter from the dining room overflowing into the kitchen where I was always forced to sit. I eyed my 100 year old great grandmother eating one tiny pea at a time, my Aunt Libby, who seemed so exotic with her ruby red hair and West Palm Beach, Florida address talking about the beach, the heat. Some random cousin would be sitting next to me at the table, playing with her food, while I waited to play hide and seek with her after our meal. She’d never find me hiding behind Granny’s mammoth Electrolux vacuum in the hall closet.

I waited on that large Christmas dinner. I waited impatiently for it every year, not realizing that time was flying, not realizing that one day all of my grandparents would be dead and we’d be down to ten at the dining table.

I’ve realized that time has flown. All that waiting has come and gone.

New waiting has emerged. I’m waiting for my son to use the potty, for my daughter to fall out of love with Justin Beiber, for my husband to quit passing gas, for my mortgage to be paid in full. 

I realize that time is flying. This new waiting will soon be come and gone, too, with the exception of my husband passing gas.

Those tiny infants that I held in a hospital bed are growing up so quickly, becoming so independent, thinking life is one big wait, not realizing how quickly time flies.

They run around putting bugs in jars with a stick and a leaf in hopes to recreate the prisoner’s environment. They run through the sprinkler with their clothes on, they have Popsicle stains on their chins and forearms. They go to bed and wiggle loose teeth with their tongues, waiting on it to fall out, waiting to wake up and capture more bugs, waste more water, eat more frozen sugar. They have no idea how quickly time flies.

Sometimes I want to be a kid again.
 
I want to run around with grass stains on my feet in my grandmother’s yard, watching her sit on the front porch with a paper fan and drink Diet Coke, waiting on the sun to set. I want to go to my other grandmother’s house and eat fried chicken and chocolate cake and wait for Hee Haw to come on her big rear projection television.

I want to be excited that summer break has arrived. I want to fall asleep in my daddy’s truck after a long day of playing mud pies and eating ice cream somewhere. I want to stay up for hours, writing poetry about some teenage punk that’s done me wrong, while I listen to sappy love songs. I want to crawl in my mother’s bed, with the box fan roaring, and watch a Doris Day and Rock Hudson marathon.

Sometimes I want to be a kid again, not realizing how quickly time flies.

As we wait, time is flying.   

Time Waiting