How Late Is Too Late?

What began as a conversation about punctuality in Brazil became a much stranger question: what happens when companionship arrives after a lifetime of carefully kept routines?

By Ismar, Campo Grande, Brazil.

The question was supposed to be simple: when is it acceptable to arrive late?

For Ismar, punctuality is not a theoretical subject. If an event is scheduled to begin at a certain time, he believes the people who arrived on time deserve some respect. He particularly dislikes the familiar announcement that a meeting will wait another five or ten minutes because more people may still be coming.

To him, that rewards the latecomers and punishes the punctual ones.

Brazilian social life can be more relaxed. Arriving half an hour late for a party may attract little attention. Fifteen minutes late for a restaurant may require no explanation at all. Traffic is blamed. Something was forgotten at home. A child had to be dropped somewhere. Clothes took longer to choose than expected.

But Ismar does not naturally live that way.

His mother may be the most punctual person he has ever known. If her Pilates class begins at four in the afternoon, she can be ready an hour and a half beforehand. Ismar is not quite that extreme, but he likes plans. He likes knowing what will happen and when.

And then, recently, somebody entered his life who does not.

Two different clocks.

The woman Ismar has been seeing does not particularly like planning several days ahead. Ask on Monday what they might do on Friday and her instinct may be that Friday is still much too far away to discuss.

Sometimes she changes plans at short notice. Sometimes she decides not to attend their dance class only an hour or two before it begins.

This disturbed him enough that, during the first weeks of their relationship, he spoke to her about it.

He explained that planning matters to him. Keeping an appointment matters. Repeated cancellations matter.

And something interesting happened.

She listened.

“Now she’s much better,” Ismar said.

The Mayor stopped there for a moment. Perhaps this was not really a story about bad attitudes towards punctuality after all. Perhaps it was about two people discovering that something insignificant to one person can be important to another.

Ismar could see another side too. Her approach to life has something he does not naturally possess.

“She has a way of living without preoccupation that is better than my way,” he said. “She doesn’t get upset with many things that I become upset.”

That difference had already begun to work on him.

“Maybe I can become more unstressed.”

For a man discussing punctuality, that was quite a development.

The dance class.

Their dance lessons became a small laboratory for the relationship.

One Saturday, on the way there, she decided she did not want to go. Ismar did.

He had paid for the lessons. He wanted the practice. In his opinion, she already danced better than he did, which gave him even more reason to attend.

So he told her he was going.

She asked him to leave her at a shopping mall while he took the class. Afterwards they would meet again.

And that is exactly what happened.

The Mayor teased him. Perhaps she had originally gone to dancing classes to meet somebody, had now met Ismar, and therefore no longer saw quite the same urgency in the dancing.

Ismar conceded that this was possible.

The Mayor pushed the joke further. Perhaps Ismar was being just a little too dutiful: the course had been purchased, therefore the course must be completed.

But Ismar had evidence for the defence. The previous week he had already skipped a class because she was moving and needed help organising her things.

So this was not simply a battle between a rigid man and a spontaneous woman. They were already negotiating.

Sometimes he followed her rhythm. Sometimes he kept his own.

That may be the more interesting rule.

A life arranged for one.

The conversation slowly wandered away from Brazilian punctuality.

Ismar has spent much of his life organising himself around work, study, his own routines and, at different times, caring for his mother. Sharing life at the same level with another person is less familiar territory.

He enjoys being alone for part of the time. He does not currently imagine immediately sharing a home with somebody else.

The relationship is still new.

“I think it’s too early to think about it,” he said.

That gave the Mayor exactly the opening he needed.

How early is too early?

And how late is too late?

Suddenly the clock they were discussing was no longer the one on the wall.

Ismar was challenged to think not about arriving fifteen minutes late for dinner, but about whether opportunities themselves can arrive late in life.

The Mayor became increasingly enthusiastic. Ismar became increasingly cautious.

There was talk of companionship, compromise, habits, independence and whether experience makes people more flexible or simply more set in their ways.

Ismar would not be hurried.

He did, however, say something that captured how his thinking has changed over the years.

“When I was young, I used to say, ‘I will never do this. I always do this.’ Today, about the future, I don’t use never, neither always.”

The Mayor immediately told him that it had taken him 65 years to find the right woman.

Ismar, being Ismar, did not allow such a romantic statement to pass unexamined.

“Does a right woman exist?”

The Mayor nearly despaired.

“This is not philosophy,” he told him. “This is companionship.”

Ismar persisted. He did not think a perfect “right woman” or “right man” existed.

Then he noticed what had happened to the conversation.

“We’re having a funny conversation, yeah?”

They were.

Never and always.

The Mayor encouraged him to stop analysing everything quite so relentlessly and allow somebody else to lead the dance occasionally.

Ismar did not suddenly become a romantic hero.

His response was more recognisably his own.

“Let’s see what happens.”

That is a remarkably open sentence from someone who likes schedules.

It does not promise marriage, cohabitation or forever. It does not even pretend certainty is possible.

It simply leaves the door open.

The original discussion about punctuality returned briefly. When, exactly, is late too late?

Ismar’s answer changed the scale completely.

Late is too late when life has finished.

Or, as the conversation developed, when the opportunity no longer exists.

That still did not satisfy him completely.

“How long should we wait for something or for someone?” he asked.

There was no answer.

“We don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know.”

And perhaps that uncertainty is the whole point.

Somebody else’s time.

There is another complication.

Ismar knows that living with another person is not easy. He has enough experience to say that without romance or illusion.

He also worries about what sharing a life demands from him.

“Maybe I’m very selfish to share my life with someone else,” he said.

For most of his life, he explained, he has worked, studied and largely organised his world around himself, apart from periods when his mother needed him. He does not believe loving somebody should mean cancelling one’s own way of looking at life.

The Mayor challenged him again, suggesting that perhaps accepting care from another person could be just as difficult as giving it.

Ismar was unconvinced.

He was not sure he needed — or even wanted — somebody to take care of him.

But the important part was not that they resolved the disagreement. They did not.

The important part was that a man who began by complaining about other people not respecting the clock was now discussing whether two very different people could respect each other’s way of living.

One likes plans.

One is happier changing them.

One worries about the schedule.

The other may decide that the dance lesson can wait.

And already each has moved slightly.

She has become more attentive to what matters to him.

He has begun wondering whether some of the things that upset him really deserve so much worry.

He even admits that her sense of humour is better than his.

The Mayor offered one final piece of unsolicited relationship coaching: live, enjoy it, have fun, worry less.

Ismar’s answer contained exactly the mixture of amusement and caution that had carried the whole conversation.

He said he would tell his partner that he now had somebody trying to convince him to marry her.

Then, as ever, there was the clock.

Another meeting was waiting.

They said goodbye.

On time.