Reflections on the Art of being Late

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on April 15, 2011

I’m going to stop announcing a series of columns unless I write them all in one sitting, because sometimes, I have trouble revisiting topics.


A few weeks ago I had launched a diatribe against school fundraisers. The single-part “series” got interrupted because the next week I ran out of time and “recycled” an old column. The week after that, time ran out on me, meaning that I missed the column deadline. By fifteen minutes. But I missed it nonetheless, and that was the one about my middle son’s birthday.


I am often late for things. This is neither a confession nor gloating on my part; it is merely a sad observation. People are kind and say, “Yes, but you have six children,” as if I has just been caught up in childbirth, and could not make it on time like everyone else. They say it with sympathy, as if “Sixkids” were some chronic condition that requires you to take a treatment at the very moment you should be leaving the house.


I wish I had excuses, but the truth of the matter is that I have run on that fifteen-minutes-late clock all my life – pre-children, pre-marriage. Although I am often late, I am rarely too late like the time I missed the deadline.


Being five, ten, fifteen (name any multiple of five) minutes late, as an Indian-born person tends to be an accepted fact of life. My friend Becki is generous, organized, punctual, and always good for a chuckle. She is also American-American, for lack of any other ethnic label to pin on her. Becki was once invited to an Indian birthday party, and she arrived promptly at 4 PM, just as the invitation stated. Let’s just say that she ended up decorating for the party and keeping an eye on the birthday child while the hostess went up to get showered and ready. All the other invitees were Indian. No one else was going to show up until five o’clock, at the earliest. I guess being fashionably late, if you are Indian, might mean not showing up at all.


I tell you that story so you can understand my background. I’m tempted to say it is a cultural handicap, but I’m sure that out of the billion of so Indians, there must be a few punctual ones. I mean, there is a military in India, and people in the military are notorious for their painful punctuality. There are newspapers in India, too, and airplanes and trains that all have definite schedules and deadlines. Surely, there is an entire crop of disciplined Indian people. I should know, because I know one of them intimately. I’m married to him, and we get on each other’s nerves every time we have to go somewhere.


I was going to continue my rant against school fundraisers from a couple of weeks ago, and I still plan to - eventually. I’m not sure if it’s the frequency of fundraisers or the proliferation of them that bothers me, but they bother me.


In an ideal world, our children would be able to go to school and sit with a stick, some string, and a floor filled with sand, and the children would come up with some geometry that could take the Eureka out of Archimedes. The reality of the situation, though, is that if your child shows up at school with a stick, it would have to be confiscated as a weapon. The string could be used in vandalism, and forget the sand, because there is bound to be some poor, hyperactive-immune-system kid who is allergic to the stuff.


The last time I had felt real ire over selling of school things was back in 1995 – when my eldest daughter had entered kindergarten for all of five or six weeks. Now that I reflect on it, I can see that maybe, just maybe, I was a slightly obsessive parent. (Naturally, we can see I have recovered from that affliction!) There are a lot of things I did differently in parenting then than what I would do now.


In many ways, I see it as the difference between the way God the Father is portrayed in the Old Testament and God the Son is portrayed in the New Testament. (Now, you are welcome to email and correct my theology, because I have email and am used to being corrected. I have children, remember?)


Having six children in the space of fifteen years gives you time to mellow and rethink your strategy. You are not all wise. You are not that smart, either. At some point you realize that you are not going to win the battle. You just want to emerge from the fray somewhat mentally intact and having inflicted as few psychological wounds on your little loved ones.


I was strict and saw everything in black and white. Now I feel that I make more allowances. There is room for a little grace. I’m tempted to tell you, “more on this later” but we realize that could mean much, much, later. Right?