Life with a Capital "L" Chapter One, section one
LIFE WITH A CAPITAL “L”
CHAPTER ONE -- LINGERING
Pages 1-4
I have lingered this morning. It is raining hard, the house is wonderfully quiet, and the coffee hot and unusually good. I meant to finish unpacking from a trip completed yesterday, to get to my writing with haste. Instead, I have stayed in other situations longer than expect, and I have been reluctant to leave those distractions. By definition, I have lingered.
Usually, lingering happens unintentionally, as in staying to eat just a few more bites of German chocolate cake. Occasionally, we are wise enough to make it a deliberate and beneficial pause—as it was a few moments ago when I fell captive to the foggy, rain-pounded Puget Sound I love so. It cast its heavy, grey spell and ruled my attention like a worthy master rules a loyal pet. I turned from it refreshed and again set to work, searching through my old journals for a particular tidbit about my grandmother. It was meant to open this chapter. The tidbit eluded me, but reflection did not. I lingered over decades of penned pages, line upon line of past sorrows and joys, notes from my children, pasted bits of memorabilia, resolves, and accounts of experiences I thought then would never fade from memory but have. I paused at a page from 1981 where I wrote, “It’s too bad emotions don’t hemorrhage, then we would have to tend to their healing or die.” The exact memory of what made that opinion so acute escapes me, but I am glad that in the midst of whatever it was, with a house full of teenagers and five or more schedules to juggle, I lingered long enough to record the thought.
On March 26, 1979, I wrote in the wee hours, obviously in a frivolous mood. I sketched a large female eye and beside it, wrote:
Ode to Eyeliner
Oh, I remember well the day when black streaks
Slipped easily round the way my eye shaped
Staying where my fine brush led,
Heavy, smooth, it never bled away
from its planned channel.
I felt so proud . . . my flawless, wrinkle-free face allowed
Such perfect application.
Eyeliner: black, dark brown, or beige
In pencil, cake, or many ways,
Was perfect eighteen years ago.
Oh, I yet roll a wet brush on the cake,
Still, a deft small line, I make
But if too much moisture gathers there
Color scatters everywhere
Through eighteen years of aging.
In 1979, in jest, I confronted my waning youth. Pages away from that I found serious words on “grace” that came from watching a grasshopper feast on a peapod in our garden. I am fairly certain now that, years ago, when I lingered over sketches, ideas, and feelings, I wrested time from better things; “I should be doing” things. Should—ought—must—mustn’t are powerful deterrents to lingering.
I still sometimes write in journals, but I am much freer now to arrange the occasion than when my family and its demands were young. Then, lingering was exotic. I longed for it as surely as my children longer for birthdays. I worked and bartered for it, dearly paying powerful time-holders like motherhood, housewifery, community and church work, and the expectations of others.
I repacked journals and turned to the task of writing. That is, I meant to. The phone rang. It was our son, Gordy, who lives nearby. This was a good time for him to instruct me in the use of my computer’s new modem. He wants to teach me to call him through it. Great. Fine. I tried to be excited. Gordy is light-years ahead of me in the use of these machines, and I acknowledge a need to catch up some. How good, says the literature, to be able to “access” someone. How terribly more thrilling to “access” than simply to phone or call out.
With a mere jillion keystrokes, a stack of instructions, reading and typing, waiting and watching, I could do what seven finger-taps on a phone’s dial, a few short rings, and my voice once did—reach my son. To say I lingered here is a bit of an understatement.
But oh, how proud I am to report that after an hour or so of practice, I had the option to ignore my phone, turn on my computer, reach the right program, tap in the code, hear a horrible access tone, type a message, leave it in a ‘room’ on Gordy’s system, hope and pray he bothers to check his computer, to open the door of my message room there, read, and then ‘access’ me ifmy computer is on and my modem initializes correctly. Wow! The joys available to efficient people. But, I should refrain from cynicism. In reality, lingering brought another slice of the modern world to me. I needed that. Surely, runs my logic, I have learned enough, I have lingered enough over things, experiences, and people. I am inclined to justify a cessation of growth, but that inclination carries grave consequences.
Beneficial lingering, the capturing of our attention, staying at something good longer than expected, being reluctant to leave, is the L that applies a brake to runaway reluctance and fires momentum to flagging zeal.
I have lingered this morning in nature’s stormy mood, in memory’s reflection, and in an exercise of growth. Now, I write to recommend this L as a necessity to being real. Lingering is a pause, whether joyous or painful, by which we are blessed. We must learn to linger for at least these three reasons: 1) to discover our world, 2) to discover others, 3) to discover ourselves. The idea reaches even beyond the ordinary. It has been strongly suggested that in order to know God, we must “be still.” Linger
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SCROLL DOWN TO LEAVE COMMENTS
Come to PPW again soon for:
LINGERING TO DISCOVER OUR SETTING, TO DISCOVER OUR WORLD
“. . . Whether we carelessly neglect setting depends on whether we have learned to value the ‘place’ provided us for getting to the end of things, of experience, of relationships, of life . . .”
