Somewhere between spring and summer is another season: graduation.

It’s a season when expectations run high.

Not just for the graduate, expecting that one shining moment on stage….

But even more so for the parents.

What mom or dad hasn’t sat on a folding chair or a hardwood bleacher and watched their child among hundreds or thousands of others, musing over joys to come?  The next degree.  A fulfilling job – that pays well (please).  Then maybe a mate that leads to marriage and children and …

But expectations are resentments waiting to happen.

It’ s an oft-repeated phrase among those with addiction and those who love them.

Jacob’s high school graduation was ripe for resentment.

His sister was in from California.  His aunt drove down from Philadelphia.  A favorite restaurant was reserved for a post-ceremony family dinner.    Diploma in hand, Jacob brushed past us, barely pausing to kiss his sister, his aunt or me.  Hurriedly, he announced friends were waiting.  The sister sighed.  The aunt shrugged.  O well, they smiled.  It’s his day – and forgave him.

But I knew better.

Deep inside my gut, where that knot of worry and fear gnawed all too often, I felt something was off.  Not yet willing to accept that addiction was luring my son away from us, I only knew that our celebration would not be the perfect family reunion.

It would take many more dashed expectations before I learned what ultimately saved me, and in many ways saved my son, too.

Expectations?  I had to let them go.  And I had to learn what I could control and what only he could.

Years later, on a May morning,  Jacob stood in a packed auditorium with thousands of others while his father, sister and mother applauded wildly.  He’d earned that college diploma on his own, in a faraway state, with a goal he’d set – without expectation from me.

We both graduated that day.

Letting go had brought him back.