morning after the long night

 

"It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. "

Oriah Mountain Dreamer 

We've had a long night. It's been a long for a few weeks actually. 

My son, while still abstaining from drug use still has the manifestations of an active addict. Lying, manipulating, self-centred thinking, and stealing, and then more lying. The only time he appears to be his old self is when he's purposely manipulating me because I have given up believing anything he says. 

So, last night grew from a frustrating afternoon, to a confrontational early evening, to what appeared to be some sanity - later this turned out to be manipulation - to more confrontation, to door slamming, swearing, and then storming out of the house with a promise to cool down and be back by midnight. 

Did you notice how beautiful the fog was at sunset last night?

My dog woke me at 330am - not impressed with this new behaviour - and on a whim I checked my son's room. No one there. There's a protocol to follow here. First call him, obviously - no answer, check the GPS on his phone - not working, likely phone is off, then come the decision to escalate or to go back to bed. 

I think about the devastated parents I know who got the 430am call from the police that their clean and sober son, but obviously still in the grip of addictive thinking, had decided to break into a gun shop. He had just turned 18. He is in prison with 3 felony charges. He is not going to have a high school senior year. He will not be home for a long while. I think about my friend's son, who after one beer dove head first back into active addiction, was lost for 5 days and eventually found nearly dead in a bad neighbourhood in Chicago full of heroin, with multiple organ and brain damage.

I decide to escalate. I call the emergency pager for his rehab group, I call the police, I text his sponsor, I text people that may have seen him. I open the call and text logs for his phone. 

 

The police officer is very polite - this IS Naperville after all - but not too concerned. I tell him what I know, give him a description, friends' names addresses and phone numbers. It's 4:45am and I have nothing more I can do. I sit on the bed and stare at my hands until 5:30, then start getting ready for work. At 6am I check the GPS on my phone and it says he's home. Out in front of our house is the same police car, same officer and he has my son in the backseat. He had been 'crashed' at the friend's house. He is unrepentant, sulky, and defensive. I can think of nothing to say to him. We stare awkwardly and I thank the police officer and go back inside to get ready for work.

At 6am the sun was about half up, there was a morning fog not yet burned away by the sun and the dew on the plants was particularly beautiful. It felt like we were in a poignant scene in a movie, there should have been music, or maybe complete silence, and just us, the police car, me in my pjs and a sweatshirt, my son, and the officer, just standing for an eternity in this beautiful foggy sunrise before we turn and walk to the house and the officer sits back in his car.

The difficult night and morning made this fog and dew somehow more important to me, if that makes any sense. So, I pulled out a time honoured coping mechanism of mine and started taking photos, some of which you see here.

It seems surreal that after such a difficult night that the world could look so beautiful. That the birds still sing, the fog mades everything seem dreamlike and precious. I'm reminded of Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"  - how,' meanwhile, the world goes on', in spite of your despair, meanwhile it offers itself to you, all its beauty, harshness and excitement. Meanwhile....

 Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Meanwhile, my world goes on, I go to work, I drink my coffee, meanwhile I do what needs to be done despite the previous night's grief and despair, because sometimes that's all you can do, is take a step, and then take another step. All you can do is look around and remember you are not alone, you are part of this beautiful and sometimes harsh world, and it is the world that is waiting for you to step forward, and announce your place; to take your place in the fire, to have your heart broken open so you can be really alive in your 'one wild and precious life.'  Or maybe that's one or three too many metaphors, I blame David Whyte  completely, him and sleep deprivation.

In the end that's all we could ever do. 

The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer 

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to
be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can
disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

People Don't Behave, or Is There Another Adult in the House?

Runners are irritating.

Not in general, just specifically at 7am Saturday mornings at my downtown Starbucks, where a large group of them commune before heading out en mass for their morning mutual endorphin rush. They don't buy coffee, who needs it with utility belt loads of little Goo Gell bottles strapped around their Spandex bound bodies in a manner that would make Batman jealous? One by one their gang accrues, the front door constantly opening to admit yet another Spandex garbed member. My seat by the window gets a constant chilling breeze, which on it's own is not so bad, but my extra dry cappuccino in the lovely porcelain cup lightly sprinkled with chocolate is cooling at a faster rate than I would like.  This is suppose to be my morning getaway. When I have to drive my son in for his early Saturday morning detentions, something that is fast becoming a weekend tradition for us, I like to find something soothing for me to do while I wait to pick up my increasingly truant boy. Having long been on a first name basis with his guidance counselor and the school social worker, this year I am adding his Dean to my frequent call and email list.  So, when I arrive, at 7am to what is suppose to be a quiet escape in a coffee shop to mull over my overwhelming parenting responsibilities it would be nice to do so without a parade of Spandex covered backsides.

I am not, strictly speaking, a single parent, but I am the one that organizes, delivers and cares for most/all aspects of each of my three teenagers busy lives. I keep things running smoothly, but with an exponentially increasing load I have become exhausted with being the one in charge, the one who bears the brunt of their frustrations, and the one who has, bit by bit, given up chunks of my life to make sure my family is taken care of. I sound like an overwrought soccer mom. I'm not. My kid's extracurricular activities are a drop in the bucket, what is spreading me thin is the four nights a week of  three hour outpatient therapy with the 30 minute drive there and back that I take my son to, the 3 meetings a week he also goes to, the life coach and social worker appointments, the continuing dialogue with his teachers, counselors and Dean, and yes, I get him to Hapkido 2 or 3 times a week. And this does not include dealing with the defiant, difficult, manipulative and confusing behaviour at home that comes with living with a newly recovering addict. This is just one of my children. My worries for the other two would likely feature more prominently in my mind if I could manage it. As it is my oldest is becoming the stunt mom for my youngest, getting her to appointments and activities. My oldest, who is spending her first year of college at the local junior college and living at home; something I thought was a huge failure on my part, has become a lifesaver for me these last 6 very difficult months. So. Is it too much to ask, that when I find 2hours for myself, abet early on a Saturday morning when I really could use the sleep, for my sanctuary not to be overrun by endorphin junkies?  This is a place for caffeine junkies, a place where I can purchase a 500 calorie pumpkin scone and pick all the icing off while I scribble madly in my journal. The place for $200 running shoes, TMI Spandex and utility belts is the park around the corner, go there and do your pre-run cluster, and leave curmudgeonly me to my warm quite cafe.

Eventually they leave, nearly freezing me with the door held open for the mass of them to exit. They'll be back, red faced and, smug and steaming sweat from their moisture wicking active wear into my drama free coffee drinking refuge, where I have come to get away from all things annoying (read: people who do not behave the way I would like). I do not say anything as I look up sulkily from my coffee foam at the irritating  runners; they are a safer target for my frustrations. The thing that sends me running (ironic word choice) from my warm bed out into this cold morning so I could be anywhere but home, where I could be somewhere where I'm not the one who has to "mend lives", where I could have a moment before I am drawn back by their "pitiful cries" is sitting in a detention room at the school now, are at home in warm beds, is NOT here, except that I bring them with me. Like the Ghost of Christmas Present, they are the pitiful things clinging to my legs that I constantly carry. The runners have not had me out of my bed after midnight driving around in my pajamas searching, they have not dumped all their collective angst on me, they do toss thoughtless comments my way, that is why it is easier, right now, to spend my frustration on them. They are just as oblivious to the good I try to do, to how I work myself to stuporous exhaustion, that if I eat, I do it standing while accomplishing other tasks, to the fact that I am driving, always driving, just as oblivious to this as my family.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

It was pointed out to me recently that "we carry our burdens alone, and if we are really lucky, maybe with a friend or family member". This idea has been bouncing around in my head and more and more, and I realize it is true. That I am alone in this, to wish for it to be different is to invite disappointment; expectations are just resentments waiting to happen after all. For all intents and purposes I have no extended family, and the friends I have here are busy with their own lives. This makes me sad but also relieved. If I am alone, I can stop putting on the "Happy Mask", can stop having the 30second "how are you coping conversations". I can put my head down and 'chop wood and carry water', or as it translates in my life, drive, feed, organize, counsel and "mend their lives". I hope I will be softer from this suffering, I hope this will not make me brittle with resentments from unrealistic expectations. One day this will change, everything does, and I will be changed as well. One day I will walk out on that road. One day I will be able to see the stars, to hear my own voice. One day, I hope.


 I hope.