Wait

We had a different kind of Thanksgiving this year ~ my younger son hosted the day in Boston.  We had eight fresh inches of snow on the ground in Maine, but that didn't keep my husband, daughter, and I from leaving early with the turkey in tow.  It was the kind family day the four of us enjoy, which means sharing good food in good company with a board game on the side.

Then I spent Friday and Saturday at home puttering and catching up.  It was much needed.

Monday night I was finally able to reach an oil guy who came highly recommended.  He has installed and serviced boilers and furnaces for 30 years and had plenty of time to talk.  He assured me that the sounds I described are the natural sounds of pipes as they heat and cool in a house that is still settling.  We talked about heating in general and he had some good ideas.  I'm sure we will talk again. 

The ice arrived Wednesday morning.  There were meetings at school and no students until 9:30 so I waited to leave for work.  I am not often in the car at the right time to hear The Writer's Almanac on NPR, but I'm glad I was yesterday.  The poem that Garrison Keillor read was a salve for my anxiety and the message has stayed with me: stop struggling and wait.

Wait
by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.