It’s hard to know what I’m waiting for, but I’m waiting for something.

Spring is late. I would have known this even if I wasn’t getting daily reminders in my email of the beautiful pictures I took exactly a year ago. One year ago, all the trees were in full bloom. The tulips were hitting their prime. The peonies were threatening to bud out. This year, there are a handful of daffodils that somehow ended up in an extra warm spot and a sprinkling of tiny tulips. The trees remain stubbornly budded out without a flower in sight. I am getting exasperated.

Instead of flowering trees, we are getting hysterical weather prognostications. Severe storm warnings dominate the news. “They preempted ‘Jeopardy!’” my mother told me. “For nothing!”

I don’t watch “Jeopardy!” unless I’m with my parents. A quarter of the questions are ridiculously easy, and half of them are terribly hard, and the remaining quarter couldn’t possibly be known by anyone but the people who play “Jeopardy!”

But my mother loves “Jeopardy!” and apparently, the weather predictions were so dire the decision was made to spend an extra half hour predicting tornadoes and severe storms and torrential rainfall and all sorts of meteorological mischief -- none of which materialized.

“They skipped the whole show!” my mother repeated, in case I had not taken in the gravity of the situation.

“We didn’t even get any rain,” I told her.

“Oh, we got some nice rain,” she said, “but no storm.”

I told my friend Andrew about my mother missing “Jeopardy!” because of nonexistent weather. “I think those forecasters get paid for how much rain they predict,” I told him, “not for the accuracy of their predictions!” I don’t actually believe this, but Andrew knows me well enough to know that.

“Weather can’t happen everywhere,” Andrew noted philosophically. He had obviously not missed “Jeopardy!”

A big storm would have been nice, but it’s really the lack of color that is getting me down. March is nothing but mud and surprise snowstorms and then more mud. April is nothing but cold wind and gray skies. So I expect big things from May. And, this year, May is dragging its heels. Whatever it is I’m waiting for, it doesn’t seem to be showing up.

Today I was studying some buds on a plum tree that were a brilliant pink last year at this time. They were always some of the first to bloom and this year there was not a single bloom in sight. I scowled at the disappointing plum tree and was tempted to give it a poor performance review. “Where is spring?” I demanded.

I attracted the attention of a woman photographing an early blooming rhododendron bush with a tiny purple flower. (I was not going to bother to take a photo of those scrawny bushes.) “Even the tulips are late,” she said. “It’s a very late spring.”

“It is,” I said.

I walked down the sidewalk, and I noticed the tiny leaves coming out. I picked one. It was shiny and soft. I realized this leaf had not been here two days earlier.

“Don’t you get it?” the young leaf asked. “This whole season is going to be over before you know it.” And, of course, the little leaf was right.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for, but I want something to happen rather than nothing at all. What I forget is that nothing at all is something. The storm passed us by. Spring will arrive in its own time. Nothing at all is actually something very nice.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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You’ve probably heard about the Stanford marshmallow test. A group of young children, about four years old, were told they could have a marshmallow right now or wait and get a second marshmallow. The experiment was supposed to test the child’s ability to delay gratification and be a predictor of how well they would do in the future.

The test has its critics. Some say that self-discipline develops later. Some say that the subjects in the test were not typical four-year-olds. Still, by and large, folks seem to agree that the ability to wait for the things we want is a positive trait that helps us achieve our goals.

I’ve been thinking about the marshmallow test off and on for years, ever since I heard about it. I am positive I would have waited for the second marshmallow. In fact, I think there’s a good chance, when the second one arrived, I would have let that one sit as well, thinking I could be the first four-year-old in history to be awarded three marshmallows. Of course, I now realize that, instead of getting a third marshmallow, all the other kids would enjoy their marshmallows, the researchers would turn off the lights and leave, and I’d be left alone in the room until the janitor showed up.

Lately, I’ve been wondering what would happen if, instead of giving the test to four-year-olds, we brought in subjects over 50 and asked them if they would like one marshmallow now or would wait for two. I’m guessing the results would be different.

First of all, the older participants might be thinking about their waistlines. They might be calculating the calories in a marshmallow and thinking they better stop with one. They might be short on time. You get to be older, and you’re not sure how long you have left. Do you want to spend it sitting around in some psychology lab all day, in hopes of a bonus marshmallow?

Or they might just decide that they had enough treats -- maybe more than enough. They might eat that marshmallow and say, “Great marshmallow! I gotta go!” because they are honestly happy with one marshmallow.

This is why I still think about that test. How long do I wait for a good thing to happen, and when is it time to realize that now -- right now -- is what I’ve been waiting for? When do I decide that what was appropriate for a four-year-old may not make sense for me today?

I shared this idea with a friend. I thought she might be delaying her enjoyment unnecessarily. I suggested she had already passed the marshmallow test and, like me, would always be waiting for another marshmallow.

“I know,” she sighed. “And I don’t even like marshmallows!”

Right now, I am busy revising a book and rehearsing a show, and neither one will come to fruition until next year. As usual, I remind myself that marshmallows come to those who delay gratification. But I also realize that I have one advantage those four-year-olds didn’t.

I know that I am happy -- right here, right now, before the book is out or a single show has been performed. I know that --even if they run out of marshmallows -- I will continue to have a very fine life without any kind of reward. I wouldn’t have known any of that when I was four.

I am enjoying myself today, waiting for my marshmallow. I am enjoying the process, enjoying the sunshine coming in through the windows, even enjoying the sight of everyone else eating marshmallows.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

This week was spent with the familiar sensation that I have no idea what I am doing.

I just started rehearsals for a show about my column and the origin story for my first novel, Loon Point, that comes out next February. There is a lot of work to do before the show will be performed anywhere, but this week we took the first step.

My director, Cheryl, and I are meeting in an old church that has been converted into a community center. The room we are in doubles as a dining hall for funerals and a kitchen for the food shelf. The floors are linoleum tile, and there is the familiar smell of cooking.

We started, as all plays start, by looking at an empty space and imagining how to fill it.

“I don’t think we need a chair,” Cheryl said.

We had talked about having a chair, and now we had a folding chair sitting in the middle of the stage. The chair looked as if it was about to do something very important and, since I wrote the script, I knew that it was not.

“I say we get rid of the chair,” Cheryl said, with more conviction.

I folded up the chair and hustled it offstage. The chair, formerly the star of the show, had been officially fired.

But Cheryl liked the hat stands I had brought and agreed we needed two of them. She liked the stool, and we added a small table -- except we didn’t have a small table. So we used the same old folding chair, now conscripted into playing the role of a table. (Don’t worry if you are confused. I’m sure the chair was, too.)

Then we silently looked at what had suddenly turned from a dining hall into a stage. “I’d like you to read the script and move around,” Cheryl told me.

This is the part I hate.

I have no natural instincts when it comes to movement. I have vivid recollections of every dance class I took as a young person. I was flexible, and classes always began with floor exercises. I would see the face of the dance teacher light up as they assumed I was a dancer, and I would dread what was coming. I would stand up and start to move, and the teacher would immediately realize they had made a mistake -- I was absolutely not a dancer. In fact, I had enormous difficulty following the simplest instructions. The notion of “body memory” was alien to me. I had a bad case of body amnesia.

But I did as Cheryl asked. I read the script aloud, and I moved when I felt I should move. Cheryl took notes with a very serious look on her face (even during the parts that I hoped were funny), and when I finished, I knew a show had started.

I came home surprisingly tired. “How did it go?” my husband, Peter, asked.

I wanted to say that I felt as if the linoleum floor of the old dining hall had ceased to exist, and we’d entered a new world -- yet I had returned to my old home. I felt as if I was doing the thing that was always hardest for me, a thing that could never be done perfectly, and -- when it was done best -- only lasted for a moment. I wanted to say I felt as if I’d taken part in a small miracle. And I had no idea what I was doing.

“It went well,” I told him. Because it had.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION