Patience

Patience is a virtue. It is also a resource. I think that I am, if compared objectively against a cross-section of society, quite a patient person.

I remember assisting at a legal clinic once. The person seeking help didn't have a case at all, and any first-year student would have reached that conclusion within 10 minutes of applying their minds to the matter. So bad this person's case was, that I couldn't find any redeeming point after a whole half-hour.

That boggles me, now as I am looking back, because I spent one and a half hours (patiently too, I might add) in that little claustrophobic room staring down an increasingly plaintive yet belligerent person who just couldn't seem to accept that there was no case to be had. It was as if beating the facts over my head continually would somehow produce defensible points on which the multitude of errors that were self-created would all go away.

So I am quite patient.

But, as I've found out, I don't have an unlimited amount of patience.

Sometimes, when things go awry, I take a step back and marvel at how tangled things have become. I then optimistically calculate how many units of patience I would need to come out of this particular encounter dignified. I then scrounge around the depths of my pockets for the loose change of patience I'm hoping which squirreled themselves away in anticipation of this rainy day.

And when I come away short, bone dry, I grit my teeth and hope that I emerge from the next few fitful moments with the blessedly spotty memory of Dr. Jekyll.

Infinity Cockroach

Cockroaches used to die three kinds of death in the Leong Household.

Method One: The Smash 'n' Scram

Application: Locate cockroach, calculate distance to cockroach, scream, scream, scream, grab closest object regardless of how wieldy it is, smash, leave, summon maid.


Method Two: Twin Flowing Tai'chi Palms

Application: Locate cockroach, calculate distance to cockroach, grab closest wastepaper basket, upend said basket, trap cockroach in basket, leave, summon maid.

Alternative: ... trap cockroach in basket, sidle basket to outside brother's room, watch him kick it over when he comes out, observe brother's interpretation of The Smash 'n' Scram.

Method Three: The Hoodwink

Application: Locate cockroach, rush after it gallantly, issue multitude of death threats, secretly shoo it away to safety, tell audience (if any) that you've killed it, earn karma points.

Well, as I said at the beginning of this post, cockroaches used to die three kinds of death in the Leong Household.

Tonight, I unlocked a new method to replace them all.

Method Zero: Infinity Cockroach

Application: Play Infinity Blade for 2 hours, spot cockroach, think about catching cockroach, catch cockroach with bare hands even before thought about catching cockroach has ended because mah hands are now Swift Furious Instruments of Death, look at struggling cockroach in hands, feel the power.

Away

It was almost too easy.

In my mind I saw her dancing away, teasingly out of reach, gravity and momentum conspiring to pull her away from my grasp. A hundred simulations showed me that no matter how fast I sprang, no matter how deftly I moved, she would see me coming, and with the slightest of effort elude me.

But I tried, nevertheless, fingers outstretched, determined to reach her, to hold her tight... and I did.

I felt her hair, enervated into flowing tresses by the stiff evening breeze, whipping against my arm. I felt her jacket, her thin cotton top, her bra strap, layers that vociferously demanded distinction as I gripped her shoulder tightly. But there was no time to luxuriate in the senses.

"No, please... you cannot go. Not like this." I wasn't sure I had spoken at all, until she turned to look at me. "What will I... we all do without you?"

She smiled. Her lips were quivering. Perhaps, perhaps I was getting through to her?

"I don't know what I can do for you, personally. But I will try. I promise I will try. If you want my company, I'll be here. If not, I'll go." I tightened my grip, although I knew that the real battle wasn't in simply getting her to stay here physically. I needed to persuade her to remain here with me, with us, and find joy in doing so.

She said certain things, but her feeble voice was no match for the rising wind, and her words drifted away before I could discern them. No matter, I had heard what she had said before. It was not likely that she would have anything new to say, by now.

"I've told you. Step by step. Just one day at a time. We'll try together... people have done it before. Why can't we? If we make it through today, just one more day, wouldn't we... wouldn't we be stronger than we were, yesterday? Doesn't that count?"

At some point my emotions, summoned by the unseen hand of some hormonal gland, had boiled up from the pits of my stomach and mixed themselves into the words I spoke. Tears, those attention-seeking fraternal twins to sadness and longing, were blurring my vision, cramping my style.

I must have said a lot more. I must have. I know I wouldn't have given up so easily. The clear knell of defeat, though, came as swiftly as it did unexpectedly, and it presented itself in the most tranquil and serene look of calm I'd seen on her face since the accident those many months ago.

"I have to go and be with him. He's waiting for me."

This time, when she smiled... it chilled me, to the bones. A trick of the light, perhaps? But there was now no warmth to be seen, nor felt, in her round black eyes. Her lips were properly upturned in a gaunt approximation of her normal toothy grin, but there was now a resolute and grim determination to those curves.

She reached up and placed her icy hands over mine, and shook her head slowly from side to side.

My mistake was in being too late. She had left some time ago, and none of us had recognized it.

My fingers unfurled, one by one, and my hand fell slowly, shamefully, back to my side. She turned back, took a deep breath. Looked up at some far-off point in the sky, seeing something I couldn't see.

And she stepped off the ledge.

It was almost too easy.

Away

It rained today.

The droplets, they pattered against the glass windows quite insistently. I couldn’t decipher their message, if any… though I noted a certain half-hearted urgency in their tempo.

There was also tea-time, today.

The buns, they lay steaming in a corner of the office. There were shrieks of delight from our friends as the pastries put on a final brave front, and for a while the cloak of silence that swathed the office rippled.

There were other things too. Things you didn’t get to see, today.

I hope the weather, and the food, and the wallabies, are agreeable, over there… where you are.