Thursday, May 17, 2018

Waiting for Forsythia

Estragon: "I can't go on like this."
Vladimir: "That's what you think." 
~ Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

It's been another brutally elongated winter season in the U.S. heartland or so it seems. Meteorologists are saying this is typical for our region and the past few years have jumped the gun on spring. Mother Nature in her wisdom teaches us delayed gratification each year as our planet makes it's revolutions around the Sun. 

I'm not buying a word of this. I'm ready to skip spring and nosedive into summer ... maybe.

We should be accustomed by now to not only wild climate mood swings but also seasons that seem to wear out their welcome. The season I least embrace, winter, is once again in my mind hanging around way past its usefulness. I think the hibernators have had enough sleep, and my maple tree in the front yard has lost enough buds due to faux warm spells followed by frosts to fill a large trash bag.

It always seems the forsythia finally break out in an explosion of yellow magnificence, announcing, "Spring is here." Each year I wait for this with great anticipation, the springtime. I have been pining for the forsythia to bloom, those harbingers of spring, to officially announce the transition from winter.

As much as I love the summertime, what a waste of a beautiful transitional time that would be, skipping spring. Transitions and transitional times are important.

As I write this and look out the window upon the first cloudless sky we've been allowed in some time,  there is a semi-tease of spring displayed for all to see. The dogwoods and Bradford pear trees, those impetuous bloomers that seem able to withstand many frosts along the road to the transition have been for weeks announcing a false spring and are standing firm in their resolve that spring is here.

Spring may not be here. It may be nigh, but it is not here.

Stop messing with me liars!

In the meantime all I can do is prepare for what I hope and pray is coming soon, continue living, persevere through the false signs of improvement of the weather to more a temperate and reasonable climate, and keep moving. I will never surrender to the cold, the darkness, grey skies and intermittent icy rainfalls.

Now what in the world does all this have to do with living life as a parent of an addict or a son or daughter in recovery?

Well, everything.

While we militantly follow our own pathways we continue to love our children and long for the reemergence of their truest selves, whether it be the announcement they are finished with living a life subservient to The Addiction or as they continue to unwaveringly, or waveringly, reach weeks, months, years, or decades milestones of recovery. We fight against false hope The Addiction throws our way before our children are truly ready to take back their lives. We wait in great anticipation while refusing to put our own lives on hold. We do what we can to prepare fertile victory gardens of love and support for when our children do bloom in spectacular colors and hues announcing their spring is finally here, the proclamation of even greater things to come, of life, love and laughter of their own making they have not experienced for far too long.

Wait for it. Wait for it. Hang in there. Spring is nigh. Summer will be indescribable.

. . . keep coming back

"You usually have to wait for that which is worth waiting for." ~  Craig Bruce

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