Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul -- but so have we...You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way, but, child, this is the chronicle of the earth...we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.
When my son ran away from home for the first time nearly six years ago, he was 15. It was sparked by an argument that I could barely remember even then. I learned later that he slept on various couches and in leaking tents in backyards for two weeks. Miraculously showed up in uniform for his first day of school, but that was the first of many abrupt and premature departures from what was, by all measures, a safe, secure and loving home. It was the beginning of a convoluted pilgrimage that he was compelled to take. Now, at the age of 21, that pilgrimage has brought him back home again, to a house that looks the same but is nothing like the one he left so many years ago.--Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)
We are all different now. He is sober, six years older -- both ancient and newborn -- back in the place of his childhood, the place of our hopes, illusions and truth about family, then and now. He has come back to an entirely new family, to be sure. In the intervening years, his father and I separated, divorced, found new partners; his sister grew, wrestled with nightmares, found love, got her heart broken, discovered her strength again and is off to college in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, my son has been a soldier in a war against addiction that is inseparable, I now know, from his spiritual journey that began for him at his birth -- or maybe even lifetimes before that. And now, just when I was preparing to be both sad and free as an empty-nester, my first-born son is home again -- or maybe for the first time ever.
This was what Thomas Wolfe was talking about when he said you can never go home again. The structure my son left and visited for short stretches of calm sobriety looks the same, but the players are all entirely different. His dad no longer lives in the house and a new man, my husband, is there instead. I am changed, a different person than the insane woman who was trying to mother him by trying to lock him into the house, then when that failed, locking him out of it. I was at my wits end trying to save him from a disease that cannot be stopped, even by a superhero.
Even at five, my son had his eye on life beyond his home. He was in kindergarten, wearing a dinosaur shirt, waiting for the school bus, when he asked me how old he'd be when he had to move out. Some kids moved out when they go to college, I told him, but that wouldn't be for a long, long time. There's no hurry, I said, trying to assure him with a smile. But he had that faraway look in his eye, as though he were already obeying another timetable. Ten years later, during his first run of homelessness at the age of 16, I asked him if he felt he had no choice. "No," he said. "I know I have a choice and I have no idea why I keep choosing this hard road."
Though I am forever his mother, I have changed deeply. It is parenting itself that brought to my knees, helped me discover who I was beyond my firstborn's savior. I have become so many things since he left. I have learned most of all to open my heart and proceed with hope, despite not knowing if my son would make it to see another day. In short, I have been restored to sanity and health. That, in itself, is a miracle and gives me faith that healing is available to everyone.
"I haven't really had a home in six years," my son said recently, his clear gaze back. "I'm trying to figure out how to have that." And I am trying to figure out how to help him find it, without losing myself. My son is back. I can see it in his eyes. He has returned home. We are all trying to figure out what that really means. Trust is slow coming, but I have given my son a key to the house. He has put his clothes in his dresser drawer, devised a nightstand, where he keeps The Fabric of the Universe, agreed to regular drug tests, administered by a clinic. Today, he takes out the trash, respects my things; he is gentle and thoughtful; he is enrolled in community college and looking for work. Today, like yesterday and the day before, he is sober.
Last weekend, my son was in a bad mood. So we went to the park with a ball, mitt and a Little League bat. I love to play catch. It's one of many activities I miss about having young children. I have no idea where the bat came from, because my kids never played baseball. But there it was, waiting for us to reclaim something that was never ours, or perhaps I just don't remember the normal times. As we pitched to each other and played catch, my son's face began to soften. We were happy, mother and son, remembering what we once had or just what we hoped for. I do not know what will happen tomorrow. But today we are home, at once brand new and very old.
