Just Wait Longer

I sent Jake to Aunt Felicity's house for three days and he came home with a trick against which I have absolutely no defense. It looks something like this photo, and it begins with, "You leave me no choice. Here comes the smolder."

With it he's gotten me to fix his video game when I really didn't want to. He's had swigs of my Diet Coke when I didn't really want to share. We've watched his choice in movies. It's not lost on me yet, so you should fully expect to see him cruising down Baltimore in my Intrepid soon, probably flinging spending money out the windows because he just can't use it all.

My question is, do you think this would have any effect on the weather? The smolder? Because it's so cold. My living room's developed rheumatism, it creaks and sighs and can barely wrap itself around me anymore to keep out all the lingering winter. Rainy like April, but cold like early March.

I stepped out in it today, the cold seeping in like rain puddles seeping through the holes in a too-thin pair of boots. And I pictured the calendar, trying to calculate whether or not the world had any right to be so cold and miserable still when we so desperately wanted some spring.

And that made me think about all the things we wait for all the time. The things we want but don't quite have, the things we wish for, the things we're working toward. And sometimes it seems like we just can't wait anymore, we can't possibly recur again and mentally survive it, we can't face sickness in one more family member, sadness in any of our friends, another day of rain. And then we do. It's not like we have any choice. We have to face them, we have to wait. But it does feel pretty good to realize that you can. And to realize maybe you can even endure it without losing hope for tomorrow.

I may fold before a 5-year-old with an uncanny imitation of a character from Tangled. But I get all that from a rainy day in the time it takes me to walk from the house to the car. Win some. Lose some. And for goodness' sake, hang in there.