The Wait / Yoani Sánchez

My mother shifts from side to side. She stands first on one leg and then the other, while I wrap my skinny 7-year-old arms around her hips. What is the line for? I don’t know, perhaps we’re at the bus stop, or outside a shop where they had plates, or in front of the drugstore to buy some aspirin. It’s a long line in the sun and it seems that our turn never comes.

She fans herself. Keeps shifting from right to left. With this movement my mother – almost oblivious – is teaching me the art of waiting, the exercise of patience to deal with the long lines that are waiting for me.

August 7, 2010