Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Where does the 'im' set in?

It is true that impatience is at the other end of its nemesis, patience. It is when you know you can't go any further, but you also know that you had started somewhere, far more pleasing, to where it desperately headed. In most cases, it's like a runaway, untrained horse that kept on galloping wildly across the field, not knowing where to go and not knowing he just tore apart the neighbor's white picket fence along the way and left a few strands of horse mane as evidence. I know it should be much simpler than this, but is impatience ever any simpler? I mean, where does the 'im' set in?

I live it in some kind of daily format now:

Oma, my 99-year old German grandma-in-law lives with us and she seems to breathe the 'im' in my patience every two minutes or so, as long as I'm at home. Over the phone it has become quite impossible, because she hardly hears anything unless it's being screamed at her. She had disposed of two pairs of hearing aid and then, just the other day, reminded my husband to buy her another one. She forgot why she hated her hearing aid in the first place: "The sound gets all mumbled up together...I couldn't understand anything."

What we found out after having her tested was that no hearing aid would have done its job on her, after all. The doctor said that, though her hearing has deteriorated quite significantly from her last test, her comprehension has gone down the drain even worse. Besides she never liked the transition period with the equipment; the adjustment period between the scrambled hearing, to a controlled volume, to where she could easily isolate one sound from the other and combine sounds that make sense together.

Oftentimes, we had to grin and bear the 'im' a lot and learned how to go with the flow and enjoy the other sweeter moments when Oma couldn't hear, much less understand, when we fool around with words or gestures or when we even berate each other over some kind of you-are-wrong and I-am-right, husband-wife back and forth. Sometimes my husband and I could talk three yards away from each other and have some sort of privacy, even with Oma as the third person and a curious black dog with the busy, wagging tail.

It's not even just the hearing: Oma's eyesight, with traces of healing glaucoma on both eyes, is displaying signs of her ninety-nine years. There were times when I had to re-wash the spoons, forks, dishes, pot and pans because they're not quite properly cleaned. [I know, we should already ban her from dishwashing, but she usually insisted and we always complied.] It's easier not to argue much with Oma, because it could be a lot pointless and stupid to even go there. Fortunately, we won the laundry battle twice, two years ago, when she thought bleach was actually the regular detergent and my husband’s ivory-blotched clothes proved that they weren't.

So with her hearing and eyesight on red alert, we learned how to have sharp-like attention despite walls and floors in between. Just yesterday, I watched her move around our eight by twelve kitchen space. [You have to remember that Oma's kitchen is her own little world and it is where she feels the most special. And if you've tasted her banana bread and her chocolate chip cookies, you know she masters the oven and baking these yummy dishes is her forte.] Well, while she moved around with the fridge door open and her slim, pale face halfway in, she had also left the hot water faucet running and the oven turned full on. I waited five minutes to see if she would notice. She went back and forth the fridge, leaving it open, to the sink left of the fridge, wondering what she had to do next.

Can you imagine what just dawned on me while I closely watched? Oma couldn't see the steaming, running water, let alone hear it; nor hear the oven heating up; nor remember what she needed to do next; nor even notice that I was a few feet away from her peripheral view. She moved around the small, square kitchen with her gray eyebrows furrowed and her skinny lips quenched, probably from her own 'im' trying mercilessly to get out.

And perhaps, on one of those rare moments, my own 'im' settled back and hesitated, then stayed way away from the forefront. This time, patience ruled and kept itself exposed, vulnerable and relaxed. I don't know where the 'im' set in a lot of times, but I am beginning to know when and where patience shows up: It is always when the heart is open and where time begins to shut up.

I could almost hear the docile horse quietly tapping its heels, cautiously slow-trotting back, barn ward.

No comments:

basically Yours

Convivially, I should attend to all the comments and e-mails that I get when I tell everyone my most private thoughts and, oh, my weaknesses even. But there is a small chance that a lot of people will bump into my own quiet place.

Simply, I don't advertise it, I don't really share it with just anyone, I don't even tell my immediate family about it. I don't even talk about what I really do on a day-to-day basis, or what, quote-unquote, achievements in the bubble-world out there I snag, or how much I do for this and that which, ideal-worldly, merits accolade and, yes, some kind of vertical trophy or something thicker than a cardboard to stuff into some Office Depot certificate frame.

So what is the purpose of this? At first it was just my way of exercise: a sort-of platform to air out what bogs my head when I think, or when I want to say something to someone close but couldn't because it's not appropos at the time or that it's simply immature to even utter, or when I feel like the flow is within me and I want God to be in the know like I am in the know of what's going on in my head, or just to be in the same page with God, because as we all know we aren't always in the same page with the Almighty. It is my own quiet place to be me - suddenly, internally, vocally, artistically, whimsically, stupidly, spiritually - from all adverbial vantage points thesaurus has already, previously factored as a word.

Besides I just am done with the ex-crap, for lack of a better noun, that came with my in-and-ex-baggage I now refer to as pride. It was the stupidity of pride and the ingenuity of embellished prejudice that prevent one's lowest self to be thrown in the air and left to be picked up by a Power stronger and higher than itself. Holding tight to a configuration of self, or the idea of self, is plain stupid in my spiffed-up notion of wisdom, which happens to be the kind that originated from my Maker.

See, I am nobody special to a lot of human beings, but I am special especially to my Maker. This alone, now, gives me peace. He knows what I am doing at all times. I don't really have to announce to Him what my heart's desires are, because He knows me inside and out. But when I blog here, when I use this platform to cry out to Him, it's as if He is right there, ready with His keyboard, ready to respond and comment, or not respond and comment, ready to understand everything I say, ready to forgive me for the foibles that I say in-between-the-lines, ready to decipher the in-between-the-lines before they even come out of here. He is ready for me at all times. He always says, I'm basically yours, my love.

Many times I ask myself: Why do I bother or not bother? Why is it that I am compelled from the deepest recesses of my heart to talk to Him? I don't even seem to exist for any other reason, but to exist for Him. But there is where I could be wrong: He made me for something and that something is so close to me now, just as far as I could stretch my arm. I could smell the purpose. I could even feel the static that creates a whizzing noise when the thin spark implodes. It is here, my purpose. Tapping on my heart, it is here. I am to do what I am supposed to do.

You know what I say to my Maker? Now I say, I am basically Yours, my Maker! Do with me what You will for me to do.

--June 11, 2008, Year of New Beginnings