The Patient Woman

She waits. Waits and watches. She wonders what it will be like when he awakens. The sun beats down upon her head, and sweat forms on her brow in little drops. They tumble down her forehead in rivulets that tickle her skin when a breeze brushes past them, and dry before they can roll down past her cheeks. She marvels at the water turning to air on her face, molecules lifted from her skin and dispersed into the infinite space all around her.

He breathes. He stirs. Her heart beats faster as she imagines what it will be like when he encircles her body with his rugged arms, carved, as out of stone. He appears very strong to her, as though he could lift her without strain and carry her wherever he wished - through a doorway, up a stairway, into a bed, through a fire. He could take her anywhere she wished to go, as well - to the water, to the top of a tree, up a mountain, across a desert. She would be safe with him, of this she was certain.

No one had warned her about the waiting, although she was finding that practice did make it easier. Admittedly, the first year was exceedingly difficult. She was utterly unprepared for the solitude, the quietude that made even her own breathing seem loud, and unwelcome. Indeed, it had taken several years to become comfortable with the sounds of her own body, and the occasional utterances that left her lips before she was even conscious of the breath she had given them.

In the third year, they survived a massive storm. She had wrapped his body carefully in the robes and blankets slated for this purpose. Satisfied that he was well protected, she had peered up at billowing clouds - monstrous mushrooms and other, more violent forms that brutalized the skies without apology. Frightened by the force of the tempest, she shut her eyes and held on to the madly flapping front panels of their tent, praying to survive this wave of destruction. She counted the moments, visualizing his face in her mind as a kind of mantra to focus away from her fear. It was hard to imagine such a thing, but secretly she believed that when he finally opened his eyes and looked at her, she would witness the entire universe and every miraculous bit of life contained within it. She would fly out of her body and go to live in the universe of his soul, found inside his eyes. This she would do, when the time came.

Many more years passed, and still she counted the hours by the rise and fall of his chest, the occasional flutter of his eyelids, and the periodic swelling and then shrinking of the part of him that lie between his hips, straining and then relaxing against the garments that covered his prone form.

She looked forward to the daily bathing which started each morning at dawn. She yearned to peel back the layers of silk that encircled him, hiding from her his difference – that which made him a man, that was so opposite from that which made her a woman. She grew to know every inch of his flesh, even as he remained to her, a silent stranger.

She knew that when they finally joined as one, she would feel once and for all the inner pulsing and opening that had heretofore lived only as color and shadow in her dreams. She would know the sweet release of the tears and tension and expectation that had been building up within her since she could remember.

Years became decades, and the woman saw her own flesh soften and wrinkle, and her hair grey and flatten. Blue veins rose to the surface on the back of her hands, and tiny, spidery red lines appeared in haphazard networks behind her knees, inside the moist bend of her legs. Her vision began to cloud, and she became increasingly aware of the sound of her breath, the beating of her heart, and an ever growing longing in her mid-section that prevented her from sleeping.

At one point, she was overtaken by an anger that pulsed through her bloodstream, threatening to explode somewhere behind her eyes, or out the tips of her fingers. How was it fair that she be called upon to wait and watch for so long?? But this, too, eventually passed, until one day she found that she was perfectly content to lie back and gaze up at the blue sky, marveling at the fluffy bits of clouds that floated across the palette of her vision, taking form after unexpected form – dog, angel, bunches of grapes…

And then, as the woman lie there wondering at the infinite varieties of nature’s creations in the sky and on the earth, the man woke up. Tenderly, he gazed down at his beloved partner and wondered how long they would have together in this world to express all of the love they could possibly share with one another. Then, he lowered his face to hers, and pressed his lips to hers, and touched his heart to hers, and the woman accepted his gaze, his kiss and his own urgent longing as her own. And breathing deeply, she held him back as tightly as she could.


© Deborah Oster Pannell
August, 2010