Waiting

I do believe it true that most people spend their lives in wait. Anticipating the time when everything will be "just so". When their lives will be complete. When the waiting is finally over. Unfortunately for most, when that time comes their lives are at an end.

Tsk. Which is why I try to live for the moment, with no more than a passing regard for what is to come. Only enough to cast a nod in the direction of responsibility. Because who can really know what is to come? Oh, we can make an educated guess. We can live our lives as though we are certain they will unfold as we plan. But then come the accidents; the phone calls at odd hours; the prognoses. And suddenly we know things will be quite different than how we’d planned.

Now, we may mourn these changes in circumstance, but we really have no call to feel that life has cheated us. Life offers us no guarantees, and we should be thankful for whatever good fortune comes our way for whatever reason. Karma, cosmic kismet, whatever one calls it. Accept it gladly, and continue to live.

It shames me modestly to admit that like most I, too, live my life in wait. To the casual observer I may appear to be simply lounging carelessly beside the boulevard, watching those with real lives as they hurry from there to there in pursuit of the next thing they're waiting for. But I've been where they're coming from, as well as to where they're going. And it's always the same. Just another place to wait.

So what could Le Boulevardier possibly be waiting for? Silly question. I'm waiting for her.

I'll know her by her walk. A selfless stride. A gliding movement amidst the jostling crowd. I'll raise my eyes from the pages Le Monde. That long, dark hair. Falling to her shoulders; cascading toward the middle of her back.

Can it be she? Her glance will tell me. That steady, knowing gaze above a whisper of smile. It is that smile which tells me that she understands those things which I long desperately to know as well. And that we must speak together softly in hushed tones as lovers do. So that I may also come to understand.

We were that way. Once. I think it must have been the autumn of 1939. Before the unpleasantries began. We became separated, and we haven't been that way since.

So I continue to wait beside the boulevard. It's been so many years. Decades. Still, after all. For how long do most of us wait for our lives to be complete? I only know that on some beautiful day, much as this, I'll see her form. And I'll call her name. She will turn her gaze upon me. And I know my waiting will be at an end. My life will be complete.