I’m a big fan of Dr Seuss and so is my son, and my favourite story is Oh, The Places You’ll Go! It’s the one I always choose at bedtime (if I get to choose), so much so that I don’t get to choose very often anymore. “Oh muuuuum, you always choose that one!” and so on. This year on World Book Day we even dressed up as The Cat In The Hat, and had so much fun and won a book token too (yay!).
The reason I’m telling you all this is that this book is really striking a chord with our family at the moment. I love the opening, the anything is possible feeling of “you’re off to great places, you’re off and away!” Surely that’s what we all want for our kids, to love and nurture them, show them what is possible and send them on their way in the big, wide world. With many, many return trips home that is. But the part that rings true at the moment is the part about the waiting place.
‘You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wriggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across wierdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…’
As I said before, my husband fell ill last spring and although his recovery so far has been amazing, he still has a long way to go before he’s back to where he was before. The next step is another operation, one which we hope will see him off his nutrition drip and more able to lead a ‘normal’ life. It’s been a long wait, and much as I am a supporter of the NHS, as anyone who has lived at its mercy will know when they say something is one month away that usually means two, or in our case nine!
That day is coming closer now and much as I am feeling anxious about it, I’m taking comfort in the simple, day to day things, like spending time as a family, reading books with the kids and just generally pretending nothing is going to happen. Because you never know, today might be our day, and when it is, we will finally be off and away!
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