Dear friends, I understand that it's almost Thanksgiving, and all that ...

Dear friends,

 

I understand that it’s almost Thanksgiving, and all that, I should probably just shut up and think about mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, but seriously, folks, If I don’t somehow get this off my chest I might blow a gasket. Perhaps I might at least loosen a belt or something as a precautionary measure. This whole thing is likely just a colossal waste of time. 

I mean, a man could spend his whole life looking for minute tapioca. And just so someone who shall remain unnamed can thicken her pie filling. I mean, I walked up and down the aisle where all of the baking stuff was – I’m sure that I’d found it there before - I looked high and low and then back and forth again. And then I went all the way around to the next aisle, just in case, and then I began repeating process where I started. It must have been literally five or six minutes. Maybe four. And then there it was, right next to the Jello where I had started looking for the minute tapioca in the first place. Someone had put that thin little red box all of the way down on the bottom shelf. 

And then – and I I know you won’t believe this – the buttermilk wasn’t right next to the milk. It all was starting to remind me of a broken record. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I have bought buttermilk. I have just walked into the store and have plucked a plastic bottle off of the shelf in the cooler - right next to the milk - and that was that. But today, after searching high and low and back and forth all over again, I even began to think of asking someone.

 

And then I started reading the tiny little price labels on the shelf where I though the buttermilk should be, and then, right where in small print, it said buttermilk. Sure enough - two bottles had gotten stuck clear in the back and I stretched my arm all the way in up to my elbow and plucked and stuck one bottle in my basket.

I tried not to be unpleasant at the checkout – it being the day before Thanksgiving and all, but there I was, wasting my life away, merely stalking the elusive minute tapioca and buttermilk. I might have been doing almost anything else infinitely more meaningful – or at least considerably less tedious.

Well, I finally did get home. The weather was certainly balmy enough for late November, but I won’t get started on that. And then, instead of doing all of the things I had hoped I might do with my precious time while I had been wandering around instead in the grocery looking for – well you already know what - I’m certainly not going to waste even more time by saying it again.

 
But as I was telling you, instead, I sat down in this comfortable chair and I began to write out this whole nonsense. I mean, really! And if you’ve gotten this far, I completely realize that I am now compounding the wanton waste of my irreplaceable time with this descent into more mere trifles and tedium.

 But think about it: I could have been taking yet another breathtaking photo of the sun and the river – rising like clockwork, day after day - flowing to the ocean, day after day. I might even have clambered down to the water’s edge and written my name in the sand with a stick where the river, rising after rain, would wash it all away. I know that all of that might not have mattered very much to anyone else, but at least I wouldn’t have been wasting my life searching all day for a little box of minute tapioca.

But no! No! I had to go the store and get buttermilk – and other assorted items. Well, at least I actually wanted the buttermilk so that I could make waffles for Dawn and myself. For waffles, I toast the pecans and chop them coarsely on a cutting board that I made way back in high school shop, where Mr. Penner had told me to take my time with the sanding. And I did. And now I still have that cutting board, maple wood, joined with dowels and glue to walnut and then more dowels and glue and more maple wood. We used bar clamps. And I sanded the boards with sandpaper and my hand. That is how you spend time. And I could show you the cutting board, if you don’t believe me. But looking for minute tapioca and buttermilk? I digress.

Yet one more thing: we usually have real maple syrup. And of course, I might tell you that waffles are a time consuming process, the toasting, the chopping. And there’s the dry ingredients, the separating of the eggs, the beating of the whites, the oil - and yes – finally, the buttermilk. And there were steps down into the basement to retrieve the waffle iron and then all of those steps back up to our kitchen. There’s more, so much more, but I should, perhaps, spare you the tedium of my life.

 Of course, you should understand that waffles straight from the hot waffle iron to the plate are wonderful. But consider this point: In the time it took to buy that pint bottle of buttermilk, the sweetness of the syrup and the chew of a crisp and fluffy waffle topped with toasted pecans is over.

This is pretty much the story of my life!

So much time spent doing something again and again, like walking to the river, maybe  picking up a rock on a sandbar near the edge of the river that looks more or less like all of the other rocks – but some color or texture or shape catches my eye - and I bend down and I pick it up and carry it with me for a few steps and then I chuck it into the river. Sometimes there’s more than just one splash. And then, as it sinks, my life passes before my eyes.

And yet so much more time will be wasted. Simply wasted. Yes, there will be waffles. And so here is the question I’m now left with: How can I have one thing without the other? And why do I waste so much time complaining about the process, but even more, about all of my time wasted when the time that I have in the first place is an unexpected gift to me? Neither the beginning nor the end of it has been or will be up to me.

It’s there in the middle of aisle number 7 that I do care – and not only always about myself.  And so many times I care about who I am with and where I am and the meaningless thing that I am doing. I care! I might have a screw loose. Here on the one hand, I do want every moment in the middle to matter. But every moment is connected to all of the other moments with the arrow of time moving inexorably forward as if life was like a needle thrust through happenstance beads strung and simply along a string. And if you don’t buy buttermilk, you don’t have buttermilk waffles.

It’s no revelation to say that I can’t get waffles with my wife -one bite at a time, pausing to talk about the syrup or the toasted pecans yet again – or something else that we probably will have forgotten about before I’ve sopped up the last of the maple syrup on my plate – all of that without someone else also taking time to stock a shelf or tap a tree.

And the difference between wasting and spending and taking time isn’t as clear to me anymore. And, if you’re looking, there’s color and texture and shape that might catch your eye while you think that you’re just trying to find a thin red box. I’ll tell you, just in case, that the minute tapioca is right by the Jello – on the bottom shelf. But it probably won’t there be if you look for it there. Mr. Penner’s advice is still sound. Take your time. Some beads just have to get strung before you get to the one that you want.

 And so I suppose that walking to the river is not unlike going to the grocery store. But neither are they entirely the same. And life is not all toasted pecans and real maple syrup on a waffle. And finally, one metaphor is surprisingly like the next one. And sometimes everything just gets all mixed up.

It’s all just life, after all – more or less. And I have indeed wasted so much of my time. And maybe you, too, even now, are wishing like me, that I hadn’t just said something once again that has already been said so many times before. If only I had at least gotten a few more splashes out of this stone.

Oh well. Now that I’ve scribbled this all out, it’s actually time to make the waffles. It will go down pretty much as I’ve described. I already have everything thing that I need. I didn’t even look at the price of the buttermilk. And the time wasn’t really that much when you step back and look at nearly sixty years  And the weather was balmy for this time of year.

I stopped on the way home to talk to three brothers across the street - three sons, three young boys - raking leaves and writing Happy Thanksgiving on their sidewalk with chalk. Along with the sentiment there was something that they said was a camel and below, also a small, chalk turkey, drawn by tracing around one of their hands. I put my hand on the sidewalk and Zach took his time tracking around each finger. It was only a few minutes that I paused. I had waffles to make. And I’ll be thankful for pie tomorrow.

This handful of beads has been strung.

 

Yours truly,

 

bert