♪ Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ♪

I wrote this on the plane today, instead of sleeping. :-) 

Waiting. 

 Just a few moments ago we were waiting on the runway, under gray skies at O’Hare, waiting for clearance to take off…and now we are cruising at 30,000 feet in the sunshine, above the clouds.

Funny how life alternates like that.

Lots of life passes waiting for wonderful moments… when you are 5 waiting to be 6, or at least tall enough to ride the good rides at Disneyland without a parent… waiting in lines AT Disneyland… yearning to be 16…18…21… anticipating high school/college/grad school graduation… counting down the days to the wedding… waddling through the days to the baby… crossing off days to Christmas/vacation/retirement…

…and conversely, waiting for moments that you wish you just skip… dozing in a crowded airport, wishing for a shorter delay…sitting in traffic when you could be home…when a marriage ends and you have to pick up the pieces… tensing up for the lab results when you just haven’t felt ‘right’… holding the hand of a loved one while they transition from this world to the next.

Life seems to rush by, but consists of many chapters in limbo, wondering what comes next.

Waiting.

I waited thirty years to see a friend again, and after that time, he fell in love with me and I with him. We’ll see each other face to face every six months for the next two years while he covers overseas assignments…and Skype and Yahoo chat in the meantime.

Waiting.

Stretch marks the size of the Grand Canyon by the time my first child decided to get here, and then took 29 hours of labor and a C-section before he felt like hanging out in the hospital instead of pressing on my bladder.

Waiting.

Twenty years’ estrangement with my academic alcoholic father, and then found myself sitting with my sisters and both of our parents in their dining room, for Christmas, with my sons.

Waiting.

Two years after a mastectomy, five surgeries and an aberrant infection in irradiated tissue… still waiting to see if marginal wholeness will ever be attained.

Waiting.

I’ve learned that waiting can be good, even if often agonizing and generally tedious. We have no control over anything so if we plan, if we don’t plan, life goes on anyway. Marriages end, babies are born, earthquakes happen, friends reunite -- the ebb and flow of the tides over the sands of time.  

While we were on the tarmac just now, a little kid in the back belted out “twinkle twinkle little star, <murmuring next line and then crescendo> up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky” cut off by his mamma before he could finish the verse. HA!

Check out the scenery while you are waiting for whatever you look forward to, and find something beautiful to focus on. Look carefully at the loved ones waiting with you, and mentally jot down what you love about them. Belt out a song that you love.

Fill the moments while you wait… and gray skies will give way to brighter times eventually.