Waiting

The power is out and my daughter is coming down with something. I’m waiting quietly while she naps on me for her Papa to return home from a long work trip. Much of our autumn was spent this way — Waiting. Waiting for him to return, for us to be together again. Waiting for the sun to rise, for a cold to pass, for the laundry to finish. Waiting for Christmas, for the year to end, for things to begin anew.

As the year winds down, time speeds up—I am racing backward through it—a strange and disorderly correspondence with all that has happened since January. I am racing backward, hoping to catch one last glimpse of this Komodo dragon of a year we rode on—an almost-mythical creature: defiant and toothy, willful and imaginative.

Last night, when the electricity cut out, everything became so exquisitely quiet and dark. There was a sudden dampening of the air, as if the earth itself was breathing it in, absorbing its richness. I laid in the stillness breathing with it, filling myself with it – somehow the absence more dense, decadent and filling than the zing and hum of man-made energy.

I let myself sink deeper, my mind cartwheeling through time. How easy it is to forget and dismiss all the effort and accomplishments we make in a year’s time in our attempt to forge forward into the new.

In a year of so much doing (moving to a new city, raising a kid, working two jobs) I am still, somehow, quietly berating myself for not doing enough. For not making a more perfect dinner, for not keeping the house impossibly neat, for not maintaining a more organized budget. Worse, for not yet having found “my purpose.” Even worse, “my career.” Do I even want one of those? Or is it just a title I have been lusting after my whole life in an effort to satiate my ego or at the very least to give structure to the chaos of whatever it is I do? Do I need to give a name to what it is I love to do? Mother? Artist? Writer? (If so, what kind? There are so many!) Homemaker? Photographer? Creative Consultant? Dreamer? Beauty Product Connoisseur? Croissant Aficionado?

What is that one shining name that will make me complete? One I can package neatly, wrap in a ribbon, and carry on my back for all to know and see?

I wonder if I found the right name I would then find my purpose or if I found my purpose I would find the name and all would be right with the world.

What I’m really saying is I don’t know what I’m doing. And what I’m also saying is I do know what I’m doing — which is to say, I am making a story of my life. I am trying to lasso up some beauty from the bits of dust being kicked up around me. In doing so, perhaps it no longer matters what name I will be known by. After all, what’s in a name?

And so here I am, racing backward. Out of breath, I make it just in time — the tail of the dragon swishes and sweeps out the door. “Thank you,” I call to it.

The lights come on. My husband returns, and our home is filled with music and laughter. My daughter's cold is gone by the next evening. Christmas is almost here. The laundry is folded. The sun will rise.