So we'll always be here wherever we go. 

And we'll always imagine getting "there".

Aren't we all silly?

Lots of things. I enjoy waiting.

But there's a fine line between waiting as just waiting and delicious anticipation, or waiting and hopeful expectation, or waiting and deciding to kindly not rush someone else. I'm a fan of waiting.

The little girl with autism I've worked with for several years now sometimes pitches big fits and when she does I just wait. I tell her "I'll just wait until you're finished" and then I sit down and wait. Usually I have something else to do - a book, a notebook, my camera, my iPod or just some toy we've brought with us. ( I'm going to get a yoyo next.)  And I just hang out with her until she gets done with all that and then we move on. 

I'm looking hopefully at all the things we want to do to our house and figuring out how to do them inexpensively and in the right order and who will actually help with some of the projects and how they'll come together. It isn't waiting exactly but it's delayed gratification and I guess it falls under the waiting category. I enjoy the whole process.

I always leave extra drive time in case I get stalled in bad traffic or a train comes or I don't make all the lights or I'm behind someone a million years old driving with a cane out the window tapping at the road to figure out where their lane is.  I like to not be in a hurry or to rush someone else and since I'm phobic about being late it means I leave plenty of time. And bring books and music. 

Right now I'm waiting for the bird nests to show up and the plants to pop out and the trees to have those lovely spring green leaves. I'm not in a hurry but I'm watching for when it all starts. I enjoy the waiting parts.

I'm always waiting. Usually patiently. But I do tend to steer toward a destination even while I'm being here right now.

Is that a cheap-shot answer? 

Things go by me sometimes. What I get used to becomes invisible. I think even the most amazing artwork on the same wall day after day becomes invisible. I hear a song on the radio over and over until I stop noticing it. I look at my face in the mirror and think, when did that wrinkle appear? I notice that a shirt I wear quite a lot is faded and sad and it has a hole I didn't know was there. I practice not seeing and inattention quite well. I am an expert.

I wish that I could see everything new all the time instead of having jaded eyes for things I think I already know. How could I think that, that I already know anything? How cavalier of me.

That grocery store scenario is only an example of course, and since I don't mind waiting in line at the grocery store, it probably isn't a very good example, really. But my point here is that I put a lot of stock in social lubricants and courtesies and I'm thrown when confronted with anyone who doesn't, or who doesn't agree on the same courtesies at least. 

I have a fair number of shoulds in my life, and although it's popular to disparage those, I think they serve a purpose. Places should be left nicer than you found them. People should take responsibility for their own lives but not more than that unless the other person is a child and needs care-taking - and then we should be polite about it and not rub it in that the other person is "only" a child. We should all shake hands more often, and say please and thank you, and take turns nicely. I think all the shoulds get a bad rap as one big lump of arbitrary obligation, but those are the things that make it possible to live pleasantly with other humans and not tear one another's hair out or take shovels to heads or brawl in the aisles of grocery stores. And I do put quite a lot of stock in them.

Don't most people see the universe this way? Even the people who use up resources and generate pollution wantonly - I think they're seeing the universe in kind of the same way as someone who smokes and eats junk food sees their body, as a living thing that can take the abuse and heal itself later. I don't think that's a wise point of view, personally, but it doesn't preclude seeing it all as a living organism. I do try not to let my universe eat fast food or get smoke blown in its face but really, I can only deal with the bits of it that are right in front of me. 

And sometimes, on the really good days, we dance together.

So that's it. If you find socks missing their mates, it's my cat and I'm terribly sorry.

Anyone who wants to contribute to getting my cat a vibrator instead, have at it.

I think I can claim a handful of real gifts - I can cook, for one. One of my favorite compliments was from an adolescent friend of my son's who said that I could go in the kitchen and make a great meal when it didn't look like there was any food there. If a thirteen year old boy says that to you, you get official goddess status for a day.

It goes along with the cooking that I have mad knife skills. It's something I rely on to knock people's socks off when I need that - I mean because they're impressed, not because I literally use knives to remove their socks. Although I'm sure they'd be impressed by that as well. 

But I don't think we really get to have "near gifts" versus "true gifts" or that we can do just a couple of things really well or that what Duane Elgin calls the near gifts are less important. That's a pretty recent perspective on what it means to be a complete human being.  It seems important to me that I can set up and solve an equation, speak enough spanish and french to get by, drive a stick shift and make a decent cup of coffee - possibly all at once if necessary. I think it's more important to be good at a range of things than to have some one "gift" that we rely on - I like Heinlein's quote that "specialization is for insects". 

I'm not sure if it's me doing the flowing or maybe more me getting into the flow?

Bare feet on earth. 

The smell of fresh mowed grass even though having a lawn is silly.

Dancing and then some more dancing.

Singing even if it's not very good.

Open windows.

A pinwheel.

Sidewalk chalk.

Paintbrushes.

Naps.

Kisses.

A long bath.

Something I didn't think to ask for. Maybe two of those.

In the past I've always loved jobs that were as chaotic and busy and demanding as possible. There is this kind of flow that happens with jobs like that and I find them weirdly relaxing. But for some reason I don't apply that to anything else - in my non-job life I don't multitask and juggle and overload myself and try to keep all the balls in the air much at all. I'm more likely to lose track of time working on an art project or just puttering around and I can spend the entire day on the tiniest gesture of a thing - wrapping a gift has been known to take hours, dusting furniture turns into examining each object and creating little altars to oddness that no one except me probably even notices. I wander through my life being charmed and amazed at each tiny thing and the only non-work-related crazy focus and intensity happens when I play video games - which I also find very relaxing. I don't know why I don't pull that perspective into the rest of my life more than I do but I've drawn some line around it and I definitely have two different ways of connecting with the world. And I love them both and can lose track of time in two entirely different ways and I'm grateful for both sides of things but I do sometimes wish I could go into job/game mode while I'm, say, organizing my closet instead of starting it and then realizing five hours later that I'm still playing dressup and taking scissors to clothes and oh I've put a really cool postcard on the inside of the door and what's that pin I totally forgot I had that and it would look really great if I wad the hem of this skirt up in it and where are those green shoes...

I don't think I have some one thing that is this big gift and which somehow defines me. And I would prefer not to. LIfe is a big thing and nicely complicated. Part of being successfully human has to be the ability to interact with all those complicated aspects and learn the new stuff when you need to - ultimately that's what every gift comes down to because even the most specialized skill is going to exist in a changing and evolving world. If I need surgery I don't want a surgeon who can do the procedure just like they did it fifty years ago regardless of evolving information and technology...but mostly I don't want to need surgery. Hey, maybe being healthy and comfortable in my skin and avoiding medical interventions is my gift?

But I've also noticed that most really competent and skilled "experts" in whatever field - surgery, technology, widget building, whatever - are great at a lot of other things as well. I used to work with these two cardio thoracic surgeons who were also kick ass surfers. I'd see them out there in the most awful weather on my way to work and an hour or two later there they would be, cracking chests and being what everyone thought of them as being. One of them loved the beat poets and if he knew it was me paging him at work he'd call back and identify himself as Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Hey, maybe my unque ability is seeing people as whole, complex people?

Even though I adore the complexity of people and have wonderful friends and family I've got this thing about not glomming on to people. The downside of this is that I've lost touch with a few people over the course of years and moves and dead email addresses but the upside is that holding people lightly seems to allow for staying friends with ex-lovers and coworkers and peculiar neighbors and also is protective with that strange phenomenon where someone else's emotional chaos somehow becomes yours by contagion. So maybe that's my "unique ability"?

But I think, overall, my most compelling skill is an amazing and impressive ability to construct run on sentences out of the merest shreds of ideas, tenuous connections, leaps toward conclusions and flights of fancy. Yup, I'm going with that one. I AM THE QUEEN OF RUN ON SENTENCES. I'm having a business card made straight away.