Patience
When I was around ten, my family and I waited in a line for hours, along with dozens of other families, to receive one bottle of cooking oil for each of us. And while there have been many lines in my life since, this annoyance from a forgotten life in Soviet Lithuania snaps into sharp focus every time I’m faced with an unusually long line, be it at a lunch counter, the ladies’ room, or TSA (remember those?).
Alas, this year has gifted me many opportunities to practice the art of patience, none more consistent than a grocery store line where I cycle between thanking the universe that a silly line is really the worst part of my day and burning with rage that it can’t go any faster.
Waiting in line for a whirl around the store has become our warped reality. I miss the quick dashes for a gallon of milk between meetings. These days, I make the most of my rationed entry, seizing the shelves like I used to seize the day, shoveling boxes, cartons, and bags into my cart, in a feeble attempt to turn back time. I’m grabbing “the staples” — greens, proteins, lots of chocolate — to get us through the week, knowing full well that we’re running out of something even as I shop and another “dash” is in my very near future. I pause long enough to make a mental note that flour supply is low today, but I’ve already got twenty pounds stowed on a high shelf, and what am I, a hoarder?.. no sirree.
I’m able to amass a modest mountain in about 10 minutes and wheel my cart into the checkout line, where the cashier is in no rush. He disinfects his station studiously and banters with the customers warmly behind the plexiglass, “find everything you need,.. I love this guac,.. isn’t it wild that…” There are two people ahead of me and I’m Patience incarnate. I breathe deeply. I have no qualm, or limited qualms, at most, because I know there’s no way to speed this up. The line is watching him bag, but actually not bag the groceries, as we realize with horror. Because although reusable bags are back en vogue, it only means that your groceries will be thoughtfully reassembled back into the cart so you can bag your loot outside. The lady behind me, holding a meager basket, croaks “you gotta be kidding.”
When it’s finally my turn behind the plexiglass partition, I project a telepathic plea with focused intensity… Just throw everything back into the cart, man.. Except the wine, careful with the wine, sir! .. and then what I hope reads as empathy back to the poor woman with the half-empty basket, but what I suspect is actually my RBF. I blame the mask.
Back at home I stash groceries into every crevice of our tiny kitchen. I’m suddenly infuriated with our snack drawer situation, which initiates mental tetris of my kitchen setup. Something needs to change. However I’ve already rearranged my office, my living room, and tetris’ed my kitchen, twice, unleashing my antsiness on my family. Reconfiguring the kitchen again, just as we’ve stopped reaching for the spoons where the knives used to be, seems like a cruelty they aren’t prepared to bear. So I reach for the next obvious solution: we just need a new cabinet.
Lucky me, our neighborhood IKEA is open and ready to dispense reasonably priced cabinets to unreasonably restless humans. We take the short drive to the store, high on anticipation of new cabinetry (probably just me), only to find a zig-zagging human snake, of which we’re unable to locate nor head, nor tail.
We circle the parking lot, making the disappointing exit and resolve to return later in the evening, when, surely, all these people would be home, enjoying a family meal at their newly assembled birch tables. Alas, returning later, we find the situation unimproved.
Third time being its usual charm, we arrive forty minutes before the store opening the next morning, racing into a rapidly growing line. We’re jolted into alertness as an employee appears by the still-closed door, behind which my new cabinet awaits. In due time the glass doors slide open with reverence and the first person is waved in, then another, then another. We wonder in unison how many people might be let in as we shuffle up six feet at a time. We congratulate ourselves on our savvy — just over an hour in line! — once we’re on the escalator inside, ascending towards the perfectly quirky miniature living rooms and kitchens inside.
Long story short: veni, vidi, vici. At the end of the day, after only another half-annoying wait while my cabinet was retrieved from somewhere in deep storage, my snacks have a larger playground, and so do I.
And then I realize we’re out of eggs. Of course we are.
