The Geometry of Waiting

I remember the streetlights in my hometown flickering to life at exactly 7:14 PM. That was the signal. It meant the game of hide-and-seek was over, or that the street hockey match had to end because the pavement was becoming too dark to track the ball. We didn’t have phones to check the time or to call our friends; we had the sun, the shadows, and the unspoken agreement that we would meet at the corner of Elm and Fourth. There was a specific, heavy kind of patience in waiting for someone to appear around the bend. It was a quiet, solitary practice that taught us how to exist in our own company without feeling lonely. We were simply occupying space, watching the world stretch out, waiting for the familiar sound of a bicycle chain or a whistle to break the silence. When did we decide that being alone in a quiet street was something to be fixed, rather than something to be savored?

Pradeep Kumar has captured this exact feeling of suspended time in his image titled Kids of Summer 2019. It reminds me that there is a profound beauty in the moments we spend waiting for the world to join us. Does this scene bring back the sound of your own childhood streets?