Seattle, Washington
Written in the first week of May, 2008

(Fiction – This is a continuation of story—see April 03 journal entry and May 05 entry.

THE END OF WAITING
On his bathroom mirror he wrote with a piece of soap,
“Whatever became of me?”
Underneath he added a new line:
“What am I waiting for?”

*
On this Sunday morning, just after sunrise, once again he ritually set the kitchen table for breakfast - as carefully as an acolyte might prepare a church altar for a communion service.

On a pale blue tablecloth, he set out two of everything: square blue-and-white Chinese plates; orange-and-blue Japanese cereal bowls; blue Mexican glasses; antique silver spoons, and small white porcelain cups for espresso.

And flowers. There were always fresh flowers. From a friendly neighbor’s yard he had cut two tall purple irises, which he placed in a vase in front of one plate at the table - not as decoration, but as a kind of offering.

The menu did not vary: Fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants, butter, and lavender honey. Blueberries. Sugar and cream.

When he had finished setting the table, he stepped back, considered his work, pushed the play button on the stereo and sat down. The background music was always Mozart - the Clarinet Concerto in A.

For almost three years now he had laid out this Sunday breakfast for two. As lovely as he could make it. As he thought She would like it.
However. Only one person would be there.

He would be alone. There was no She.

His housekeeper, who always put away the unused table setting on Mondays, was the only other person who knew about the Sunday communion. She never asked about it, assuming the second place was set for his absent wife, She-Who-Went-Away.

The housekeeper thought his ritual was a sign of relentless sadness - a gesture of grief. She remembered the first year. He had left the back porch light on every night and placed a note on the table just inside the door:

“Welcome Home.”

For an entire year he did that. The housekeeper would turn off the light when she came each morning, set the note aside, and begin her day’s work in tears - especially on Mondays after the Sunday breakfast. She never spoke of this. She thought she knew and understood.

The housekeeper was right about the missing person the first year.
After that, someone else was on his mind.

While he did have a deep and sorrowful nostalgia for the love that had withered and died, She-Who-Went-Away had been on the verge of departing for years. It had taken twenty years for their companionship to wither and dry up. A ripe plum had become a stale prune.

He was not surprised that she finally left, only surprised that it took her so long. For the last ten years her hand had always been on the door knob. She exited his life like someone dying after a long terminal illness. By the time it happened, he was used to it. Nothing remained but a shadow.

Nobody’s fault, no obvious reasons - except that the ties that bind somehow fell away. Love is born, lives, and dies. That happens. It grieved him. But, if truth be told, he had to admit that she simply got to the exit before he did.

He found it easier to sorrow over her absence than her presence.
On the wall of her empty room he had written:

That was then – this is now.
That was that – this is this.
This is it – this will do.
And that is that.

Technically, they remained married - but only for legal and financial convenience - and would probably remain so until one or the other found another love. He expected that would happen for her soon. He sensed that a final settlement was not far away. He felt hopeful when he heard that she had a new companion.

And he was also expecting that might happen for him.
Thus the empty place at his Sunday breakfast table was for someone else - The One, who, despite his yearning, had not yet appeared.

Setting a place for her at his Sunday morning table was not unlike the act of lighting a votive candle in the private chapel of the church of his life.

His faith could be superb self-deception. He considered that. But he had come to rely on the power of his imagination, which arises in part from what it refuses to foresee. He imagined she would come. He waited.

Waiting contradicted his experience and personal style. Most of the finest things in his life had come to him because he had not only imagined them possible, but he had pursued them with all his heart and mind and resources.

He had always been willing to risk an improbable life and take the consequences. Luck and fortune and surprise seemed to pass through most people undetected, like neutrinos, but he sensed their presence, and reached out for them. Luck and fortune and surprise favor the alert, the open-eyed, and the prepared.

Some things cannot be found unless looked for. He always said that if you wanted to catch a train, one must first go to the station. If he wanted to win the lottery, he must first buy a ticket.

“Then, why,” he asked himself, “have I waited so long?”

However.
And it was this “however” – this “on the other hand” – this dark balance weight to his optimism - that had kept him waiting.
True, he yearned for love.
However. There was the other truth:
Most of what he believed about true love had proved to be crap.
There - that was the contradictory answer to his question.

It wasn’t love he wanted but something like love - something parallel to it - the same shape and form, but harmless in the end. He wanted everything love had to offer except being stretched out on the torture rack at the end.

It wasn’t Love or The One he wanted, but all the feelings that went with the journey of seeking and finding and exhausting that enterprise. The pulsing flow of blood that went with that emotion as it ran its course. The intensity it brought to life - joy, excitement, fear, pain, ecstasy, mystery.

But he did not want the responsibility for the inevitable consequences - not for himself - or for the other person involved. One morning he found himself thinking he wanted to experience love as theater. As a play with actors and actresses and scenery.

That thought was what brought him through the door of Waiting. A door that had not been locked - just closed. For no specific reason he could think of, the time had come.
The end of waiting.
This Sunday breakfast would be the last solitary communion.
“Enough,” he said to himself, “Time to get back out into the flow of the world.”

No more waiting.
He ate his breakfast, and cleared all of the dishes away. When the housekeeper arrived on Monday she would find the table empty.

The next day, the first Monday in April, fired by his idea, he would go out into the world to seek his fortune. He was going to hire an actress. Someone like that woman he had met in Santa Fe and then again yesterday. After that he was going to enroll in dancing class again - to refresh his ability to tango.

But first, he would invite the forces of magic and wishes and spells. Just to set his mind in the direction of surprise. On the now empty dining room table, he laid out his supplies. And put tango music on the player.