"Waiting is work."

My father, on the telephone, waits for the return of my mother, away in Sweden. One fills her eyes with her history and with the world; one fills his eyes with the familiar and with a brief emptiness.

But a small emptiness echoes the greater one, just as a shadow in the sun is kin to those of the evening, those of night. And absence that ends reminds the heart that lives that there is an absence which lingers, lengthens, and deepens with the days.

In the west, my dear aunt waits while her husband works to leave. He has a few days, a few weeks, and the shadow lengthens, the absence grows louder in its silent way. This waiting is such work.

They say, "But you are doing nothing!", because the eyes see only what they see, they feel colors and they taste shapes, like a child's blocks, have never built a house, only to see it fall, the eyes see but know nothing, it is the heart that knows by learning, the lessons of waiting, the shadows of morning, and the shadows of evening, the absence that is filled, the emptiness that is not.

In the southwest, another aunt waits for tests to return, waits for hope, while expecting dread. Waiting is more work than knowing; the shadow does not give up its meaning, and a void cannot be filled with thinking or with wishing, but only with time.

Here I wait for the sale of a home; I wait for my efforts to bring return; for the heart to let go of it tears; for the sun which slipped away into carnelian evening, swallowed by its own departure, emptied into the resounding stillness of the night, to fill again like the promise of the One: that dark and light are married to a single tone; that the eyes wait for surfaces; while the heart waits for what cannot be touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen.