Waiting… What is the first thing you remember waiting for? Christmas maybe? That pure excitement, the magic…there were no fears, no worries, no disappointments. I think that our expectations were not very high in those days. There were no Fisher Price toys, no Little Tikes, no Nintendo or computer games, no DVDs. Little girls got rubber dolls, little boys got toy trucks or guns. No we did not get oranges, that was a bit before my time. But we did get candy canes and they were wonderful even if they cut your tongue at the end… I remember lying in bed the night before Christmas forcing myself to be totally still, hardly breathing pretending to be asleep. I could hear the grownups moving about the house, getting things ready. I could smell wonderful food slowly cooking, and perfume…secure in the knowledge that I would not be disappointed…This was innocent waiting…
Later I remember waiting for telephone calls from boys. A different kind of waiting. There was a lot of uncertainty and even more expectations. Would he call, and if he did would he say the right things, and would he like what I replied…would he ask me on a date…would it be fun…would he be nice…It was a lot less predictable than Christmas. But it happened more often. The outcome was never the same but the thrill was always there with every new boy. You could not show it too much though, you had to be cool! So you only shared the excitement with your closest friends. Parents pretended not to notice… So they were not part of it…This was discreet waiting…
Later still, the best wait of all: waiting for a baby to be born. Waiting for a new life to begin is the most wonderful thing yet it also can be tinged with contradictory feelings. Unwanted pregnancies of course carry their load of guilt but even long awaited babies can bring out fears and worries. Concerns about the baby’s health, fear of pain, worries about one’s abilities as a parent, about changes in our lives, about financial issues and so many others. A mother to be is often torn between wanting to see her baby and wanting to keep him inside her. She may be tired and uncomfortable but knows that caring for a newborn is more tiring still. She wants to know the sex but once she does, half of her fantasies have to die. When you conceive a child everything is possible, there are no limits, but once the child is born many of those dreams dissolve. It is not to say that giving birth is anything short of the most extraordinary event in the world, but it goes to show that waiting for it is a bitter sweet experience.
There is yet another wait…unexpected…dreaded…the wait for biopsy results. Once the doctors have found something suspicious you feel as if you are dangling over a precipice. You want to know and yet you don’t. If the results are to be good you want to be told as fast as possible but if they are bad couldn’t they wait a bit so you can have one more day of blissful ignorance before tackling the battle? Since you do not know what the results will be you dangle…waiting…over the precipice…