Deferred Hope Knocks at the Back Door

Two crows sat on the cedar rail fence, their ebony feathers glistening in the early morning sun. Being the Canadian crows that they were, presumably their conversation was about the weather with Winter’s last hurrah and Spring’s tardiness. The flakes that fell so prettily even in mid-April left one wondering if Old Man Winter had a serious case of dandruff. Round-bellied robins hopped about in the snow looking perplexed and wondering if they got their dates wrong. Icicles dripped a teary adieu. Smoke still curled from the chimney. Frozen clumps of slush and snow lined the laneways like some misguided attempt at spring décor.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but, a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12, quoted my sister as she posted a picture of her magnificent magnolia tree that was braving through the cold with its delicate blossoms. Last year those blossoms all froze off, but the year before it bloomed in a raving glory outside the window of the spare room where I stayed during a visit to her home. It is a splendid, big, old, tree that dwarfs the house and is unlike anything I’d ever seen when it’s in flower.

As Spring makes a fashionably late arrival, another belly is rounding and growing and preparing room. We keep wondering if it’s a girl or if it’s a boy, and every now and again get to feel the push and kick under our hand on that tightening skin. Will this wee one, our third grandbaby, be dark like daddy or fairer like momma? Will she/he be prompt to a due date or sashay to the event as fashionably late as this Spring?

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but, a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs)

This little one is a fulfilled desire, but for years there were sick hearts with a deferred hope. Plans are made, as plans should be made, but then life happens, and things don’t go according to plans. What then? How do you carry on when all around you it seems that everyone else’s plans are being realized? How do you smile and be happy for them? You want to, you truly do, but then every month you bear witness to your own private little funeral. Hope is deferred again. You don’t want to get heartsick, but you do, because it is so very hard.

As a parent, seeing your grown child weighed down with a burden you can’t shoulder for them requires continued parental growth. Gone are the days of pulling them up on your lap and soothing the tears away. Now you share tears and long conversations, but you can’t soothe away the hurt. Sometimes you say the wrong thing in your attempt to say the right thing. Maternal love is fierce and loyal, tender and undying, but still you need to stand aside, helpless, and let the journey unfold for your grown wee one.

There is a strong urge to fix things for other people and that usually only adds to the trial of it. In our attempt to make someone feel better, we might resort to clichés and pat phrases because it is too hard to not say anything at all. “It will happen in its time”, we might say while inside everyone is wondering, “What if it doesn’t?”. Pitying or wondering glances add to the isolation. Even a kind and heartfelt “How are you?” can trigger the rawness.

How can we hold space for someone without forcing them to be present? How can we extend kindness while respecting a hard and private journey? How can we keep the circle open and broken, always welcoming but never compelling? Maybe it’s ok to excuse yourself early from yet another baby shower. Maybe it’s ok to cuss like a sailor when disappointment floods in yet again. Maybe you need to hide out while you learn to breathe again. Maybe finding that safe place with one or two people to uncork the bottled-up emotion can help ease the sense of desolation.

The romantic ideal of babymaking gave way to a new intimacy forged in the clinical spaces of waiting rooms and doctors’ offices. Appointments, more appointments, and still more appointments. Poking and prodding ramped to the nth degree. And then a glimmer of hope. And then…

Stories are sometimes too painful to tell in the making and can only be told after, which can lead to an implied image that things, life, is or will be, always resolved. Beauty from the ashes. Redemption. But the ashes are as real as the beauty, and, like sorrow and joy, are not mutually exclusive. Ashes may be tidily swept into a discreet urn, but their grit and soot remain. “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” (Ian MacLaren) is a motto by which to live. And even if your kindness is rebuffed, stay kind.

We are on the cusp of Spring unfolding in all her fecundity and lustre. The Artist readies new colours to add to the palette. And we wait in anticipation, with gratefulness to Life and to the advances of medical science, to meet this little bundle.

(~Aspects relating to other people’s stories are shared with permission~)