Chit Chat

“Don’t tell me how the clock works, just tell me what time it is.” (Anonymous; today, and to me)

I am Chicago born and Connecticut bred, but somewhere along the way I’ve picked up what my mother refers to as a “midwestern” mentality.

She means a drawl without the accent; a succession of pauses and wayward glances. A mention of the back-story, an interesting tidbit here, an “oh, wouldn’t you just guess it” there. It’s my dad forever appearing in my explanation, himself a talkative ex-hippie from Normal, Illinois.

We both chat up whomever we happen by; security guards, bus drivers, shoppers in the produce line, squeezing limes. Hours go by in a blink. My dad will be sent off for a simple errand (prodded by a last minute realization that we’re out of sour cream) and I’ll watch for his arrival at the back door many, many minutes later, my mother’s impatient nails tapping the crystal of her Tiffany watch, her mantra increasingly louder, “Where the HELL is your father?”

I always reply the same. “He’s probably talking to someone.”

We talk too much for most. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow.

It bothers New Yorkers, like my mother. She’s from a land always succinct and always to the point. Time is money and you’re wasting both.

But I see something in it: a conscientiousness, a harkening back to Rockwell and the Fourth of “Joo-ly”--that feeling which permeates every lazy summer day on the porch, sipping lemon selzer and licking frosting off a tri-colored cake, a moment where there's nowhere to go and nowhere to be and that's just fine. A consideration given to the desire to learn as much as possible from all people, and wanting to extend that same courtesy in return.

It does bother some. But it’s not bothersome. And if anyone gets sick of us, then we just talk to each other.