Waiting

 

Any livestock owner will tell you that the biggest mistake you can ever make is to turn the water on at a water trough and walk away.  It never fails.  You have a thousand things to do and you think that you can just leave the water on long enough to fill the trough, go and take care of another small chore, then you will come back and turn it off.  Not going to happen.  There is something about turning on water that brings on amnesia.

If you are lucky, you will only forget for an hour or so, resulting in a small lake around the trough.  If you are like me, you will forget for several hours, resulting in a large lake and a very large water bill.

I have two big water tanks for my pastured horses.  It takes about 20 or 30 minutes to fill them completely to the top.  Waiting has never been something I am good at.  One of the vivid memories I have from my early childhood is waiting on my daddy.  Daddy loved to talk to people and he never got in much of a hurry.  So, of course, he was frequently late and my mom and I had to wait for him.  Mama worked at a department store in our small town.  She didn’t drive, so someone had to pick her up after work every day.  Saturdays were the big shopping day, and the store stayed open until 9:00.  Everyone came to the town square on Saturday night, filling up almost every parking space.  The women shopped while the men got haircuts, then loitered around the courthouse discussing farm prices and weather.  Daddy and I would eat at the Dairy Dip, then I would visit the dime store and get my week’s supply of candy (Do you remember that you could at one time get enough candy to last all week for just $1?) before waiting at the store where my mama worked, sometimes playing in the stockroom or wandering the aisles inspecting the merchandise.  At 9:00, we made our way to the car and waited.

“When is Daddy coming?” I would ask.  “Oh, he’ll be here in a little while,” Mama would sigh.  I think that’s when my impatience with waiting was developed.  Waiting in traffic, waiting in line at the store, waiting for a concert to begin, waiting for an appointment, waiting for a water tank to fill up – they all drive me crazy. 

I was reminded of this last weekend when our local theatre group put on a play.  One of the other actors said with a sigh, “The worst part of this is waiting after house opens until the lights go down and the action begins.”  He is right - it’s one of the longest thirty minutes I know of.  The other is the time it takes to fill up those water tanks.  And there is no way to hurry.

So, in the relative cool of the early morning on Friday, I made my way to the pasture.  It was comfortable under the shade tree where the water hydrant is, so I perched on the edge of one of the tanks and prepared to wait. 

Bear went off across the pasture on an errand of his own; Sophie and Scout sniffed half-heartedly at a few patches of weeds but decided it was too hot to chase rabbits.  Sophie came over and leaned against my knee – her version of a hug.  I watched a hawk making lazy circles in the sky, wondered why there are no pecans on the pecan tree by the garden fence this year, and was treated to the rare sound of a bob white.  It did occur to me momentarily that I could pass the time by walking briskly up and down the fence and get in some exercise, but I quickly got over that.  Meanwhile the water swirled and rippled as it rose and the leaves in the morning breeze made patterns on its surface.

  I don’t think I had any monumental thoughts during that period.  I certainly didn’t solve any of the world’s problems, or even any of my problems.  I just sat there, being still.  Maybe I can get used to this waiting thing, especially if it’s an early summer morning, with my dogs leaning on my knees and time slowing down, just for a little while.