I phoned Ronnie the meeting reminder she had requested. It was 7:00 a.m.
“I’m awake,” she said, “and ready to meet you at 8 a.m.”
I believed her—again—and made the twenty-five-minute drive. I rolled up to her apartment building at 7:55 a.m., paid the meter through the app, and strode into the place. I pressed the code on the keypad and waited for her to buzz me in. No answer. I readjusted my computer bag and checked my phone. Shifting my weight, I glanced out to the street and eyed my phone again. I called her and left a message.
After a few minutes, the guy behind the reception desk stood and opened the door, welcoming me inside. He asked if I needed anything while I waited for my person.
I waved away his offer of hospitality with a thanks so much anyway and sat on the pink couch in the lobby. I texted Ronnie to let her know I had arrived in case she had missed my earlier voicemail. Silence. At 8:15 a.m., I dialed her again.
“I’m on my way down,” she said on the other end of the line. “I just have to grab my coffee first.”
“Okay.”
I breathed in the new building’s details—the morning light through expansive windows soaking the lobby, the sleek pink upholstery, the gold of the lamps and end tables and hanging lights. I looked at the clock again, and I thought of a mother’s heartbeat.
Our first introduction to time comes in the womb, I learned from a podcast, and the rhythms or violation of those rhythms teach us the concept of time and awareness of its passage. Time is marked in speech too, and auditory cues anchor us in sentences. The hearing of it matters. This is how we learn when we are.
8:20 came, then 8:30. Still no Ronnie.
Curiosity replaced the earlier irritation I felt over my client’s habitual tardiness. In a month of weekly hour-long meetings, we had only spent a total of thirty minutes together. Something was going on. But did Ronnie even know it?
I called her again.
“I’m coming,” she said. “Just had to find my keys. One of those mornings.”
“Since it’s so late,” I said, “we’ll need to reschedule.”
“Almost there,” she said, a cheery lilt to her voice, but I knew she wasn’t. “Can you wait?”
“We only have thirty minutes left now, Ronnie.”
“I’m coming,” she said with a chuckle.
My other clients’ no-shows usually turned into cancellations at the fifteen-minute-late mark, but Ronnie’s promises pinned me to my spot that day in her apartment building.
How many times had she asked a doctor to wait? Or a dentist? Or her social worker? She had done this to employers a handful of times; her resume and stories of frequent termination were a testament to that. I could wait—I was paid for my empty minutes too—but what was going on?
Was I missing something? I sifted out the what wasn’ts of Ronnie’s life: no upbringing in a foreign country, no neurodivergence, no addiction, no hearing impairment. But what about trauma, anxiety, or fear? There was something hidden in the lagging, and I wanted to know.
The American way—with its exacting clock—ticks on, and we must conform to succeed. But what if we don’t? Was my client’s case a matter of couldn’t or wouldn’t? I had visions of timers and metronomes and assigning her activities to accomplish during the span of a song. Her primary goal to get a job shuffled off to a tertiary spot in my mind, and I reordered a new plan to try with her. But maybe employment wasn’t the first thing. It sure wasn’t the only thing.
At 8:55 a.m., Ronnie strode into the lobby of her apartment building, ready to meet with me. She just had to blot up a spill from her coffee cup first—if I would only wait.
And so, I did.
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.