Waiting and carrying

 Sometimes I dream of a time when I neither have to wait for anyone nor carry anything. It hasn't happened yet.

I remember the days when my children were small — before I learned to drive and had a car — when, through my living room window I would see my neighbour walking along the street with nothing in her hands. It was beyond my imagination that this could ever happen to me. Everywhere I went I had a toddler on my hip or a baby in my arm, or a stroller and a bag of nappies/snacks/wipes/toys. 

Sometimes, coming home up the hill from the bus stop, carrying four bulging bags of groceries, I didn't feel certain I could make it all the way to our house — I wasn't strong enough, the hill was too steep, the bags were too heavy. But I managed it because there was no one else, no one to help, so what can you do?

But those days have passed. I had learned to drive by the time my first husband left me in my early forties, and a result of his departure was that for the first time I got to choose my own car. No more cast-offs from my mother-in-law or navigating the country lanes in a massive Volvo estate (husband's preference).  

I got a zippy little Nissan Micra like the one that belonged to the Classics teacher in the school where I'd worked as a chaplain. I used to look at her car and wish I could have one the same. And once my husband left, I did. I loved that car. From then on I no longer had to carry everything with me and travel by bus. I could roll up to the edge-of-town supermarket and get as many bottles of milk and packs of toilet paper as I wanted, because I could just toss them in the back and drive home. How wonderful was that? 

So I don't have to carry much any more, but I still have to wait.

I remember being at York University when I was nineteen, Ken Roberts coming by (also a student then). I still see him, an elderly man nowadays, he lives in our town. He stopped and asked me what I was doing — because I was just standing there, in the foyer of Vanbrugh College. "Waiting for Roger" (who became my first husband and the father of my children), I said. 

Every time I saw Ken in college I was waiting for Roger. I spent many hours of my life waiting for Roger. Waiting for him to come home from school (he was a teacher) so I could give everyone supper and bath the kids. Waiting for him to come by with the car and pick me up from the roadside where I stood with bags of groceries. Waiting on windy street corners for a lift home from preaching somewhere in the Methodist circuit. Waiting maybe twenty five minutes, maybe three quarters of an hour...

I came new to this town — Hastings — when I was carrying my first child, waiting for her to be born. It's a seaside sprawl of roads and buildings, straggling along the coast. Unlike the compact medieval market town of York, Hastings resembles a trailing drift of seaweed. Everywhere is a long way from everywhere else. I didn't know anyone here except my in-laws then, but I made friends with other young mothers. On Thursdays I would catch the bus up onto the Ridge to see my new friend Carole. I would wait patiently for Thursday to come round, the day I got to see another adult, a friend. I remember waiting at the bus stop, Rosie as a toddler holding my hand on the narrow pavement, Grace as a baby strapped to my body in the sling. There was a bus only once an hour, and sometimes it didn't come at all — and we would have to trail home, Rosie screaming, Grace asleep.

That was forty-five years ago, but today I am still waiting. My (current, different) husband has gone out but someone has to be home for the tradesmen working on the roof. I can't get too involved in anything because they intermittently need attention. So I am waiting until later, until they have finished, until they go away. My husband has arranged for them to brief us on the work they have completed when he returns home at 12.30. He says he will try to be prompt (and he always is, and is a man who does his best in every respect).

In the afternoon he has another appointment.

I wonder when we will have lunch, and how it will materialise, if I have to be part of the builder's briefing but we have to eat before my husband goes out. I have no idea.

I have turned this over in my mind. I think if I assemble everything and start cooking, if I get the timing right then it can be not quite ready but not going cold or burning, and I can get back to it in time to serve up before my husband has to go out again. Meanwhile I will be ready with cups of coffee for the tradesmen from time to time in the course of the morning. I will not allow myself to concentrate on anything that engages my attention. I will remain on duty.

So I am waiting, to get the timing right, to weave through the inflexible concrete posts of masculinity that expect me to be ready when they want me but otherwise in the background not impeding their busy lives full of important and pressing obligations. Cheerful. That is what men want women to be, primarily. Cheerful. 

Can you tell, I do not feel cheerful today?

I remember a day when we had builders in when our kids were little, and I was similarly occupied as a handmaiden. There to let them in to answer any questions as and when they arose, to make coffee and tea and serve snacks.

"Day off, is it?" the builder asked me kindly.

I wish.

Waiting. Carrying. Waiting and carrying. These two unacknowledged and unnoticed commitments are so very much part of the lives of women. 

But I also remember a day when instead I asked someone else to wait. It was when my second husband Bernard was in hospital, terminally ill. The doctors had cut a hole in his throat for a tube and offered to cut out his kidney — but no, he was coming home. The consultant came round and said he could leave. It was at the end of July. And I... I said he'd have to wait. My twins' twenty-first birthday was on the third of August. Before I plunged into juggling round-the-clock care of Bernard with pastoring four churches, I wanted to just pause and make sure they had the best birthday. Treats. A lovely afternoon tea. Gifts. Time dedicated to them, not pushed aside because someone else needed me and couldn't wait. My dear, clever, gentle twins, my third and fourth children, who — when they were little — waited so patiently for the chance to hold my hand, as we bundled along through the world; and whose eighteenth birthday was tossed aside in the chaos of losing our home and our income as their father left us. So, since Bernard was safe in the hospital, I told him for that last couple of days he had to wait, and then I would bring him home. But that's not what I normally do. I usually fit round what other people have on their agenda.

And you?

Day off, is it? What have you been doing this morning?

Try to be cheerful.

*        *        *

Later, it turned out that all of us were waiting.

Our builder (a solar panels engineer) was waiting for a part that should have come today but didn't, and for a colleague who couldn't come after all so the last bits of work to the roof had to wait. He looked very despondent about it — had to reorganise what he'd planned, because our job can't be finished until tomorrow. He just had to wait.

And my husband did his best to get home when he said, but he had to wait for the bus, which didn't come, so he had to get a different one and walk home the last bit down the hill from Asda.

But both those men were also patient and cheerful. They did their best.