Do you have the patience to wait
Tao te Ching
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.
When my daughter was conceived, I remember sitting in the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning (pun intended), watching the window on a plastic stick to confirm what I hoped to be true in my heart. I don’t think I had ever wanted anything to be “positive” as much as I wanted to see that extra little line in that window. I’m sure back then it took about 30 seconds, but that memory stretches in my mind… lasting for weeks of stomach-tingling anticipation and hope.
Over the course of parenting, there were many stretchy moments like that. Waiting to hear something, to know something, to find out something, to see how she did on this thing in school or that thing at the doctor’s office, or whether she was coming home on time from that night out with that boy we absolutely detested, whether she got accepted into that program, whether her work visa application to Australia got accepted… parenting is a shit-load of waiting and wondering and it isn’t until they move out that you realize you never got a chance to appreciate the whole “now” thing. And then you only get to do it in ironic retrospect. Right now I’d sell whatever shriveled soul I have left for the smell of her sweaty head pressed against my chest and the feeling of her twig-skinny arms wrapped around me.
And while there is never a cut-off from worrying and waiting and anticipating in parenting…
as I had fictitiously believed before she turned 18 and I was sure I could finally sleep through an entire night, and boy was I naïve and stupid
…it does ease up a bit over time.
But today I find myself thrust right back into that stretchy-time stomach-twisting angst-building WAITING. Only this time it isn’t for our daughter, who is living a thousand miles away in the belly of the zombie apocalypse beast in Seattle.
Today, it is for Charlie.
As much as time stretched out the thirty seconds I waited for the “positive” sign on a pregnancy test, I wonder how much time will stretch out between now and Friday when we hear about the results of the Covid-19 antibody test he took today.
While not quite as exciting as the genesis of my family, knowing that there’s a chance my man won’t be expelled from Eden quite yet does put me into an OMG HURRY UP AND GIVE ME THE ANSWER state of mind.
Of course, if he does get that “positive” result, it will mean I have to go down and take it next. Because maybe even in my old lady decrepitude, maybe I’m one of those who got it and never had a symptom.
Suuuure.
But we’d have to know for sure, and by the twisted beard of Zeus that would change a lot of our super-careful-anal-retentive-where-are-the-gloves-and-the-alcochol full-tilt crazy protocols we play at currently when things enter the house. Not that I’ll be hugging the UPS guy or guzzling wine straight from the bottle the minute those things come near my front door (and oh how I long to do both of those things, right now), because a girl has to have SOME standards of conduct, but maybe I won’t have to go all Hazmat-Harriet with shaking hands and two-hour double-hot showers and prayers to random deities every time we do a mad-dash grocery run.
So why didn’t I bother getting the antibody test today? Because it is from a private homeopatic health care clinic…
one of those alternative medicine places I dive into once in a while when I allow hope to rise and my disgust of allopathic doctors has not waned sufficiently for me to strip down in front of one of them, and I’m willing to let someone give me weird drugs and powders. Not that I think any of them will work, but at least it’s better than sitting here hating God for this poor excuse for a body in which I was born. And don’t think I haven’t considered heading down to an isolated cave in South America where some shaman will pack me full of ayahuasca and cleanse my chakras while I puke my guts out. In fact, that might be my first post-apocalyptic vacation. Watch this space… should make a hell of a story
…and I’m not going to ask where they got a hold of one of the tests… what Sisters-of-Charity clinic they robbed or which shipping truck (probably headed to a hospital full of needy sick elderly people) they hijacked, but they are charging a non-alternative arm and leg for the tests, and while I’m more than grateful they have them I’m not forking out yet more money until I know if I should bother. So if Charlie hasn’t had the zombie-plague virus, neither have I. And if he has… praise the Great Hammer of Thor it was worth every penny to find out.
Charlie, of course, is completely stoic, his usual phlegmatic worldview unchanged. He was far more upset that he couldn’t fill my valium prescription at the pharmacy because I had stuck it in my wallet and forgot about it more than six months ago…
and let us all sit here for a minute and ponder the utter stupidity of someone who clearly worships at the altar of the benzodiazepine gods and could actually let that happen
…and he knows how rough this all is for me. Because that’s who Charlie is. He is the Prince of Unflappability, and I am an angsty, flappable, hyperbolic princess, and every day he makes sure my tiara is on straight and I have a freshly pressed cup of coffee in my shaky, sleepless hands.
I would shelter-in-place with this man for the rest of my life, whether it flashes out in the blink of an eye or stretches interminably like the time spent waiting for a test result. Although I have to admit I can’t wait for this whole “did he or didn’t he have this damned disease” to get answered so I can go back to making fun of his Charlieness. Because I can’t poke fun of him for having the memory of a goldfish…
oh, look! A castle…glub glub glub…another circuit around the bowl… oh look! A castle!
…until I know for sure he is A-ok and will be for the foreseeable future. Surely that would be in poor taste… right?
Up the Tao Staircase 