They do not have Congratulations on Your Continued Recovery cards, or at least they don’t have them at Walgreen’s, which is where I go to get items for his care package. I’ve already sent him granola bars, almonds, and a new book from Amazon, but I have to go to Walgreen’s to get cigarettes, cigarettes, some car magazines, a bit of chocolate, and a card. I have a system, first at Walgreen’s painstakingly explaining the cigarettes are not for me, and later at home as I pack and label his bi-monthly box with trinkets and necessities so he knows he’s not forgotten and is still loved. I cry a little each time, sometimes I cry more than a little, sometimes I keep the tears in my eyes all day without them ever falling down my cheeks. My chest feels tight, and I am drawn back into the place where hope and fear co-mingle whenever I stop my busy mind and think just of him.

Today it really feels like Spring, and as I carry my reusable shopping bag of cigarettes (because cigarettes or not, I’m still me) into the house, I stop to look at my garden. My front garden has gone from snow to mud in a week, and for days I have been crawling in this mud looking for the first signs of life. Today the  daffodils are breaking through the ground. Today I found the first buds of the Lenton Rose under the snow. Today my dog tore through the yard unimpinged by snow, and sent clumps of mud flying in his joyous wake, and today, I stood and listened to the cardinal I’ve named Oberon sing from the still bare maple tree. Today Spring is here. Today you can hear hope in the air, see it the mud, and for moments I feel it in my chest.

In the cycle of nature there is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement.”
― Paulo Coelho,

There is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement, and so we keep moving. As long as there is life, there is hope, and today there is life, today there is hope.

There have been other Springs, other hopes, some have lived, many died, but I’ll hold these little bits of it close, at least for today, and maybe when I’m mailing his package this afternoon there won’t be as many tears floating in my eyes, or maybe there’ll be more, but they’ll be the good kind of tears, maybe.