Nice title, huh?
The title comes from a little story my mother used to tell us kids when we were traveling and getting hungry/restless/bored. It was a story of a man and his donkey and they were traveling through a desert, or somewhere quite hot and arid without any place to get something to drink. And it’s been so long (30+ years!) but the gist of the story went something like this–
Donkey: Water, master, water!
Man: Patience, jackasss, patience.
Donkey: Water, master, water!
Man: Patience, jackass, patience.
Donkey: Water, master, water…
And on and on it went.
I hated the refrain but hearing my mother say the word ‘jackass’ gave us fits of giggles. And to this day I can’t think of waiting for something, and feeling impatient waiting for something, without hearing my mother’s voice, ‘Patience, jackass, patience.’
I’m impatient lately. I’ve been waiting to hear from my Warner editor if she likes Flirting with Forty and the longer I wait the more certain I am the book doesn’t work for her and the more restless I get imagining extensive rewrites.
My kids are impatient, too, already discussing Halloween costumes and then their Christmas wish list. I can’t believe I’m even having to discuss Christmas shopping with them in the middle of September but they are kids…and kids find waiting hard. There is only so many times one can say, ‘Be patient. December is still months away.’ No wonder my mother resorted to ‘Patience, jackass, patience.’
And now as I wait to hear on my Warner book and try (so far unsuccessfully) to make substantial progres on my new Harlequin manuscript, I feel like a parched donkey and I know exactly what my mother–a great, practical woman–would say.
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