A Lesson in Patience

Despite deeply rooted cultural and family traditions, I never developed the Zen-like patience required for hunting and fishing. I just got bored. It's a shame really, that mind-spinning restlessness I felt after less than an hour waiting for a deer to present itself for slaughter or a fish to notice my shinny, yellow Shasta lure as it spun and jerked its way through the murky, cool lake water of Lake Greenwood.

Uncle Bill had no such restlessness perched on a deer stand 20 feet up a pine tree, silently surveying the familiar landscape, thinking only of the deer that might or might not show up. "It's not just about getting a deer," Uncle Bill often said about his love of the sport, "I just like being in the woods. It gives me time to think about things."

Uncle Bill's wisdom is undeniable without the obfuscation brought on by adolescent arrogance, resentment, and fear. Hunting and fishing (which requires essentially the same single-minded temperament and willingness to "be") are legitimate portals to finding contentment and purpose in life. Uncle Bill's ability to access his own peaceful realm through such simple activity is certainly worthy of envy.

Writing does bring focus, clarity, purpose, meaning, and occasionally contentment, but I suspect that a direct comparison between the psychic benefits of hunting (or fishing) and the difficult task of writing would reveal writing as the hands down loser. Want to be happy? Go hunting or fishing.

A Second Chance at a Freelance Life

The last time I launched a "freelance career" was nearly 25 years ago. By most measures of success, it didn't go that well.

It is true that when I got a writing or a photography assignment, I met interesting people who apparently appreciated my accommodating southern manners. I always returned with a good story or revealing photograph. In fact, Walker Percy, a southern writer of some reputation, once called me a "painless" photographer. The description fits, but I have often wondered if Walker really meant it as a complement. After all, Southern "niceness" and gentility are often nothing more than a soothing, numbing shield from responsibility or worse an excuse for cowardice.

In any case, I was living south of San Francisco in a small walk-up one bedroom apartment right on El Camino Real in the moderate to well-healed town of Burlingame. In fact, for a first try at the California rental market, the apartment was, in the lexicon of most women, nothing short of "cute."

The apartment was comfortable and clean, but I thought of the apartment's Mediterranean, sky-blue trim and off-white facade as a colorful billboard sign pointing the way to a new, purposed-filled life. In fact, as I watched two burly men carry my oak desk up two flights of external switchback wooden stairs and disappear through an open door at the top, the thought that something, anything, could go wrong was as foreign a concept to me as dying or falling out of love.

Full Circle

Almost everyone carries around a bit of Mary Lee's affliction - procrastination brought on by indecision, fear, or convenience. I am no better, or perhaps a little worse than most, regarding the purging of unwanted or underused possessions.

I had almost abandoned Mary Lee's oak desk when I left South Carolina, and had I not taken the time to replace the thick, gray paint with two coats of clear, satin finish, that's exactly what I would have done. Yet, the smooth, tiger-grained desktop was familiar and comfortable with plenty of room for stacking books I intended to read, projects on the verge of completion, or bills I hoped to pay. It was a perfect desk for procrastination.

A few weeks ago, I offered the desk to my boss. A picture posted online sold the idea and and my boss promised to pick it up over the coming weekend. In preparation, I disassembled the sturdy reminder of another era, carefully removing the five heavy drawers and backing out six large wood screws that held the desktop in place. My work revealed a surprisingly lightweight but well constructed framework, mortised, blocked, and glued and engineered, I'm sure, with travel in mind.

I staged the desk for removal in the library near the front entrance of our house and made peace with giving up the desk. Over the next six weeks the nooks and hiding places created by the the neatly stacked drawers and desk frame filled up with everything from art supplies to laundry waiting for a ride to the cleaners. I felt channeled by Mary Lee. However, all the players in the simple exchange procrastinated or otherwise failed to follow through. And so the desk sat and waited for something to happen.

Then, I lost my job and Mary Lee's hoarding disorder made sense. You never can tell when you will need the things you plan to throw away. Better to just keep it all. So after more than 30 years of moving this desk on and off trucks, in and out of station wagons and cars, up and down stairs, in and out of rooms, the desk may have finally found a permanent home.

After filling a few cardboard boxes with family pictures, employee awards, and assorted "personal effects", I told my boss that I'd be needing the desk after all. Then I drove home, reassembled the desk, pushed it underneath the most light filled window in the room and starting working - an outcome only Mary Lee believed in.

An Old Desk Finds A Home

Nearly 33 years ago my roommate in Columbia, SC sold me her desk for $20. She needed the money. I needed a desk. It was a fair and sensible trade. At the time, $20 was a sizable sum of money, but I figured Mary Lee needed the money more than I did and she was, after all, my best friend - and on occasion, perhaps a little more. But that's another story.

Giving the desk up was hardly a sacrifice for Mary Lee. She had been using the desktop principally as a staging area to stack boxes of books and old clothes destined for donation to the Salvation Army. Although the charity had conveniently located its headquarters only a few blocks from our house on the University of South Carolina campus, Mary Lee, as was her nature, procrastinated. And I guess with good reason.

I would often hear the gritty, unpleasant sound of a cardboard box sliding across our old, buckling hardwood floors punctuated by Mary Lee's swearing to no one in particular that this box, and no other, contained an illusive pair of shoes or an old bathing suit she intended to use for a river tubing expedition down the Broad River. In some ways, I thought my purchase of the oversized 1920's office desk was good therapy for Mary Lee. I figured it would force her to finally fill the cargo bay of her her signature red, rattle-trap Toyota truck with the boxes and share her bounty with others.

As it turned out, that transfer of wealth never happened and moving Mary Lee's desk into my room down the hall just made it that much easier for her to pry off the faded, dogeared box tops and dig through the contents with greater frequency. Had Mary Lee's therapist known about the boxes, and I suspect maybe she did, the therapeutic value of purging her room of the containers would have had value beyond measure.

Perhaps carrying the worn boxes one by one down the stairs and across the small lawn to her beloved truck would have allowed Mary Lee to leave the demons of abuse and disappointment behind and get on with her life. Unfortunately, as far as I know, that never happened.

In fact, by the time I left for Austin, TX two years later the number of boxes had grown considerably and Mary Lee referred to the neatly labeled containers in her room as storage units. I remember one of the boxes she labeled as Things I really, really, really don't need! THROW AWAY! A good sign, I thought. Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered that the words THROW AWAY had been scratched out and beside the potentially therapeutic words Mary Lee had scibbled the word maybe. That was sad I thought and a little hurtful.