There’s this wonderful meme
making the rounds. I bet you’ve seen it. It depicts a wolf with a definite air
of “smug” about him. The caption reads: “The groundhog said six more weeks of
winter. So I ate him.”
This is a meme that I am sure
my first born, my son Christopher, would enjoy having printed out, framed, and
hung in his home office. He has long held that his favorite holiday, which isn’t
a holiday at all, is Groundhog Day.
You know that old saw, “A son’s
a son till he takes a wife; a daughter’s a daughter for all of her life”? Well
that pretty much describes my relationship with my first born to a tee. We’re
not in daily contact, or even in weekly contact. Our communications, never mind
visits, are hit and miss—mostly miss.
Then, last March, he broke his
left femur when a very large dog decided to attack my son’s dog, got away from
his handler, and plowed into Christopher. That collision sent my son airborne,
and he crashed down half on the road, half on the sidewalk. Being diabetic, we
all knew he was looking at a very long recovery. Surgery was required, of
course, and I was very worried about him. I began to text him each and every
morning, and some days, I even got a response back. I was trying to get us both
into the habit of at least a once a week contact.
I’m still working on that
little thing.
But I have hope! On February
2nd, first thing in the morning, I sent him a message that read, simply, “Happy
Groundhog Day”. I can tell y’all without reservation he is the only person I
know (and I know a lot of people) to whom I would send this message. To
my astonishment, he replied, not after his work day, but within minutes! And his
reply simply filled me with joy and hope. He said: “Thank you. I was wondering
if you would remember.”
That made my day for two
reasons. The first, was that he sent his reply within a few minutes of my
texting him. The second is the most important, and the source of my hope. He
told me that he’d been thinking about me.
I’ve never been one to demand a
lot from my kids, not when they were under my care, and not now that they’re
adults. In some ways, that hasn’t been a positive thing for any of us. I likely
should have demanded much more of them. My parenting wasn’t lackadaisical; it
was, rather, parenting done by a woman who’d grown up without a father, and
whose mother had instilled an unhealthy level of fear in her. I didn’t want my
kids to ever be afraid of me the way I was afraid of my mother. I probably did
allow them too much leeway when it came to expressing their opinions, and their
freedom to choose certain aspects of their lives.
I’m not going to waste a lot of
emotional energy in regret, because my attitude was the best it could have been
at the time, all things considered. Hindsight really is 20/20, isn’t
it?
Now, back to those
prognosticating rodents. Apparently, according to the four varmints I’m aware
of, there is no contest as to the ‘forecast’ for spring. The Canadian two
(Shubenacadie Sam and Wiarton
Willie) proclaim there will be an early spring, as does Staten Island Chuck.
Only Punxatawney Phil saw his
shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter.
I’m thinking poor
Phil was likely rudely awakened from a pleasant nap, and that forecast was the
rodent version of “a pox on you! A pox, I say!” One alternative is to somehow
imagine that one area of the continent will hang onto winter while the rest of
us bask in the hopeful renewal of springtime. I really hate to imagine that
groundhogs could have that much power.
Of course, there is
one more possibility: Phil could be wrong. But in these modern times,
knowing that and getting the little varmint to admit as much are two entirely
different things. Accepting responsibility for mistakes is, by all appearances,
passé.
These days, truth no
longer matters: it’s all about the spin.
Love,
Morgan
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