Wednesday's Words for February 8, 2017

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
http://www.morganashbury.com
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