Patience
by Reb Bearne 02 Sept 2007
What always amazed me about my mother was her inability to listen to anyone trying to help her or give some advice. She had the impatience of an ant.
“Meddlesome busybodies who should mind their own noses,” she would state quite clearly with her own nose placed in the mid air between ceiling and floor.
" They are only trying to help,” I would plead with her to show some form of thanks that people could be bothered at all with her.
“You are interesting and they want to share in some of your adventures. The time to be so worried about others is when they are not talking to you!”
She would look at me, tut, mention my father in some inaudible look of lacking and return to her sphere of interests and mutterings as to what was going to happen next. She’d never stop in the here and now, to relax in the present tense was not something she understood or would entertain. Neither did she acknowledge the bewilderment or hurt in others, as she would dismiss them with arrogance that they had nothing to offer her and it was only she who could influence where she went and why.
Her enigmatic stance needed a great deal of stamina to keep up with, she would sweep me up in dynamic, some would say romantic, gestures and we would be off. When it all came to nothing or indeed we were in trouble she would smile and say
“Never mind better luck next time and at least we had that experience – who knows where they will lead us next time.”
“Next time?” I would say nervously.