Then the call ended.
Then the automated voice asked if I wanted to save or delete the message.
I stood there, wooden spoon in hand, steam brushing against my face… and felt something inside me go completely still.
So still it almost felt like calm.
I turned off the stove.
The dumplings sat unfinished in the cloudy broth, pale and incomplete. For a strange moment, I thought of Samuel. He wouldn’t have been angry—not really—but he would’ve sighed, looked into the pot, and said,
“Dot, patience is the whole point. You can’t stop halfway.”
Forty-one years of marriage, and that lesson stayed with me more deeply than anything else: patience. Stir slowly. Wait. Let things happen in their own time. Don’t rush the broth. Don’t force what isn’t ready.
I spent most of my life believing patience was a virtue.
That evening, I began to realize it could also be something else entirely—
