Patience

Is a virtue. Is a virtue?

In two weeks, two of my younger neighbors will begin 2nd and 3rd grades. Nothing extraordinary in those two levels, but their beginning catapults me back to turning 26 and accepting a position as a 2nd/3rd grade teacher because of an overflow of students in a Baton Rouge elementary school.

Yes, I was finishing a degree in secondary ed at LSU, but, hey, the job was certainly more lucrative than driving as a courier for a local bank. And was kind of, sort of, related to my intended future, a high school English teacher. Sort of, kind of.

By the way, my schedule was adjusted to accommodate my student teaching spring semester--mornings with 7- and 8-year-olds, afternoons with 17- and 18-year-olds. Interesting teaching day.

Now how patient was I that late August when my new charges filed in that first day? Oh, I'm sure somewhere there's a spectrum for measuring patience, but I'm guessing my threshold was not much more than middling. 

I won't belabor the point, but the simple act of my young students changing from one task to another slowed me way, way, way down. Does slow and steady win the race? Oh, we were slow and steady. Some children slower, some steadier, to be sure. 

I adjusted.

This growing season includes tomatoes and cucumbers, which I share with neighbors and family. New to the rotation at the request of the rising 3rd grader are sweet potatoes, Beauregard. and Mahon Yams (Not yams, but sweet potatoes). 

The 90-day growing cycle in a container has met with a mixed response. Yes, she notices the vines growing up the fence. Yet, no obvious action like the cucumbers and tomatoes, and so not so impressed. That waiting thing, you know. And I can make no guarantee about what we'll find when we harvest the crop. 

Just be patient, I tell her.

I haven't told her about the Chinese wisteria a niece of mine seeded--in a pot no less--which may take 10 years to flower. My niece was 11 at the time and now is fifteen and taking her driver's license test soon. She may be 21 when the first spring blossoms appear, nearly half a lifetime for her. 

By the way, Chinese wisteria vines spiral clockwise and the Japanese type the opposite. What Southern Hemisphere wisteria might do, I can't imagine.

But, we wait. 

Another month on sweet potatoes. Another 6 years, perhaps, on the wisteria.  How each will turn out remains to be seen. We face the unknown, the uncertain, and the waiting. I am good with that. 

Maybe ultimately patience, then, is rooted in another trait. Faith.