Just Wait

3/4/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Just Wait

Kids are wired for instant gratification, so one of the most irritating phrases I heard as a kid was, “Just wait.” I heard it a lot, in variations that inspired uneasiness, impatience, or dread.

“Just you wait…” Somehow you knew that whatever you were waiting for wouldn’t be good.

“Just wait a minute,” probably meant quite a bit longer than a minute; perhaps even never, if the adult got distracted.

Sometimes they left off “just,” which was even more alarming. “Wait till your father hears about this!” Experience told you exactly what you were waiting to get. But a milder warning that my parents used frustrated me even more.

“Your time’s coming.” This might occasionally be substituted for “Just you wait,” but most often it simply meant I wasn’t old enough to participate in an activity.

“You’d get too tired riding to the south pasture. Your time’s coming.”

“You’re too young for makeup; your time’s coming.”

“You’ll understand when your own daughter wants to do that. Your time’s coming.”

The most maddening thing was that deep down you knew they were right, and sure enough, my time always arrived.

Today, I have mixed feelings about that. I’m summer’s child, so getting through the season of short sun becomes more bearable when I tell myself that my time is coming. A chinook, or sighting the first robin, enhances the anticipation, even when the next day brings a whiteout. I’ve managed to drag myself out of bed in the dark for months now, knowing that as days lengthen it won’t be necessary to turn on lights to find my clothes. And then, turning over the calendar, I note that promise is soon to be broken. Daylight Savings Time looms.

Golfers have been waiting for this. Your time is now. Ditto for fishermen; my daughter in law who trains for marathons, and ranchers behind with pairing out. And I’ll get on board eventually, when it gets warm enough to sit on the porch at sundown, walk in the meadow, and dig in the flowerbed.

But right now, I’m frustrated with this semi-annual silliness. Whoever’s in charge of stupid has decided that waiting for things to happen in order isn’t valid anymore; that cutting off one end of the day and adding it to the other end really makes more time. What it makes is tired; for kids who refuse to go to sleep while the sun’s up, for parents who have to fight them about it, for folks in ag who’ll work until long past what used to be bedtime because it’s too wet to do field work much before noon.

Just wait. We’ll get used to it, like we always do. And about the time we do, the time will change back. Sure as sunrise, that time is coming, and just as surely, some of us will be complaining again. Come to think of it, maybe I really never grew up.

Judgment Calls

Lyn's  weekly column appears in two local papers, Sheridan County Journal Star, and Valentine Nebraska,  Midland News. Once a month in Cattle Business Weekly.  Lyn lives in Alliance but commutes back and forth to her Brownlee Ranch where her son and wife and Grandchildren still live! It is located S and West of Brownlee, Nebraska!

She's an excellent writer, and It's my privilege and honor to have her permission to  reproduce her writings from time to time.

2/25/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Judgment Calls

            My friend and I enjoy interacting with audiences after presenting programs for the Nebraska Humanities Council. Often we hear pioneer tales, or are reunited with people from our pasts, and whenever we mention the places we hail from, somebody asks if we know this or that person in those hometowns.

Recently, during a story about lady bronc rider, Tad Lucas, I added that I too am a native of Cherry County. A frail looking woman came up later to tell me her daughter had connections with a family in Cherry County.

“Yes, I know them,” I replied, preparing to add what good folks they are. But she wanted to convey a message of her own.

“Well, they’re Catholic, you know,” she said. “I’m a Protestant. My faith has kept me going through the loss of my husband, but my kids, well, some of them are following the right path but others… I’m working on them.”

It was hard to listen politely as her discourse became even more judgmental, but I’ve learned that when someone so opinionated gets going, about all that’s required of me is an occasional, “Hmmm, I see,” or, “I’m sure it will turn out ok.”

Then, a man approached Deb with a response to her mention of having taught school on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

“Those Indians, they don’t believe in God, do they?”

Deb has a deep respect for Native Americans and their spirituality. As she carefully began to explain some of those concepts, the man interrupted her several times.

“I mean they don’t believe in God the right way, not like we do, isn’t that right?”

Eventually, I think both of them called a truce, knowing this wasn’t going anywhere good. We usually come away from a performance energized and uplifted, full of new ideas and reassured that after all is said and done, humans are more alike than different. This time it felt like we traveled home under a cloud of sadness. But nothing happens by mistake, and the lesson I took from those encounters is this.

Most of us take for granted that everyone else thinks like we do, or if not, then they are wrong, and should be persuaded. This applies in virtually all aspects of life. It’s the reason we say things like, “How could she do that?” “I can’t figure how they live that way,” or “It’s about what you’d expect of a …” (fill in the blanks with Republican, Liberal, Hispanic, lawyer, teenager, man, blonde…)

When we say those things we reveal ourselves, our conceit, prejudices, ignorance, arrogance, and most of all, our fears, because above all, we fear being different. In our minds, different equals wrong, and in order for someone to be right, someone else has to be wrong. The rise of global terrorism surely bears that mark.

The woman who fears Catholicism never thought to wonder if I might be Catholic, and if so, whether I would be hurt by her comments. The man who denigrated Native American spirituality might well have been speaking to someone of that descent. Deb’s hair and eyes are dark, and she carries herself with that sort of proud grace common to our First Nation friends.

 I’ve been in groups with someone whose family members live an alternate lifestyle while a person in the room made scornful comments about gay marriage, and listened to rants about low life criminals, knowing that the woman in the seat next to me had a son who is incarcerated.

Surely we can be true to our personal values without making mean-spirited comments. I’m still a little off center by recent encounters with judgmental people, likely because I too need to work on self-righteousness.

My children’s father had a saying about not letting one’s mouth overload another part of the anatomy. We all do that. We can all do better.