Today I am practicing waiting.
I am waiting for the rain.
I am waiting for the new green leaves, for the dull dryness of the hills to turn to juice.
I am waiting for the sweltering heat to abate, for the dogs to come out from under the shady bush.
I wait for the threat of Covid-19 to go away. For my fear for my neighbors – for Mary and Hector, who’ve been keeping their store Stop y Buy open across the street, for our cuidador Juaquin and his extended family who have all moved back in with him, and for the old man down the street who shouts out a blessing and the old woman in her front patio whose eyes come alive whenever John and I walk pass – to ratchet down a notch.
I wait for my fear of either John or I contracting it or unknowingly giving it to others to become a thing of the past.
I wait for our country’s confinement to pass, for the borders to open, for flights to resume.
I wait today, this very minute, for the phone call from the States to come saying that my 92-year-old father has been successfully moved from his current hospital bed to his new hospice bed at home.
I wait for the phone calls from my Step-Mother and my sister. I wait for their anguish. I wait for their tears. I wait for their high-pitched and low-pitched laments over the unbearable task of watching my father die. I wait to be ready to hold their pain in my heart from these thousands of miles away when they call. I wait for my Dad’s soul to take off. I wait to become an orphan. I wait to greet my own tsunami of pain when it comes.
At the precipice of the rainy season, at the peak of the pandemic, at the beginning of my father’s final end, I wait…indoors, under the fan, looking out the window, by the phone.
Nicaragua has been my teacher for four years. I am as ready for all of this as I have ever been. I know much better now how to wait. And, gloriously, thankfully, how to receive.
