the waiting place.

I do not usually turn to Dr. Seuss to wax philosophically, but his description of "The Waiting Place" perfectly describes the place where I have been living this past month. 

     The Waiting Place..

      ...for people just waiting.

           Waiting for a train to go

            or a bus to come, or the rain to go

            or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

            or waiting around for a Yes or a No

            or waiting for their hair to grow.

            Everyone is just waiting.

           (Dr. Seuss, excerpt from Oh, the Places You'll Go!)

We have been waiting for confirmation about allergies

(yes, the baby has a tree nut allergy).

We waited for the sap to flow, then for our reserves to thaw,

only to have it all go bad.

We have been waiting for the snow to melt so we can plant our fruit bushes 

that arrived three weeks early.

We have been waiting for signs that spring might really come after all.

We have been waiting, and in the process it seems like life has been on hold, or at least my inspiration to write about life has been on hold.  But we are moving on from The Waiting Place. Even though it still feels like winter here some days, the robins and crocuses are telling us otherwise. We are looking, and more importantly, moving forward, no longer waiting, but reminding ourselves to live in the present moment. 

This moment has us tearing down walls, hosting a steady stream of visitors, off roading with strollers down muddy abandoned roads, slopping through the garden slush envisioning what spring might actually look like when the waters recede enough to let us dig in, learning about epipens, and while we are mostly out of The Waiting Place, "a most useless place," we still find ourselves waiting on spring.