After addiction, if you’re lucky, there is recovery – both for you and for your loved one.
And if you’re very lucky – and you’ve done the work – you’ve learned how to live one day at a time.
Even harder, you may have learned how to be present in every moment.

On a Friday morning I stand on a beach in South Florida trying very hard to live in the moment.

Few bodies are here this early.

On a flattened chaise lounge lies a long, very bronzed man in a ruby-red bathing suit. A couple skims along the water’s edge, kicking up curls of fluffy white surf. They clasp hands. On the upper slope near the grasses lies a dark lump, someone curled on a mat, deep in sleep.

From where I gaze the ocean is as smooth as a lake.

A thin, bearded blonde man crosses the sand and approaches me. He grins. “Heh, where’s your bathing suit? I’ve never seen it so calm.” He sweeps past me to the outdoor shower.

I try to hold on to the present, to get it rooted in my heart as firmly as my feet dig into the sand.

Tomorrow begins the trip home north, away from this sunshine.
And away from my son.

With me travel memories blurred in blue and aqua, emerald green and lime, and yellow afternoons…

Evenings with Jacob and his friends, living their lives enriched through recovery, speaking with him at a treatment center, finding purpose and meaning in every breath.

Try as I might to hold on to this moment, it too passes.

But the memories remain.