Season of Change

There is a quiet miracle going on in my house. The quiet part is amazing in itself, because the miracle involves my son and he has never been quiet. Not about anything. Since the moment he was plucked from my C-sectioned belly as a small, sinewy creature, my boy has stormed through life. Big smiles, loud cries, deep questions, he lives big. For a time, as recently as last spring, I could not help imagining how big his death would be, too. As a severe drug addict, his disease did what the disease does when left unmanaged: it got worse. Then it got much worse. He came home for the holidays and never went back to the Bay Area, where he'd been leading a secret life, barely hanging onto to socially acceptable activities like work and school. In January, I kicked him out of his childhood room into the freezing snow. He spiraled down steep and fast. He became homeless. 

Even when he had food, he didn't eat it. One day, I drove my son to an appointment. A pint of blueberries, grown in summertime on the other side of the world, sat between us. They were perfectly sweet and juicy. As my son got out of the car, I offered him the rest of the basket. He looked at them as though remembering what it felt like to enjoy food, but sadly shook his head. I watched him walk toward the office building, stopping to light a cigarette.   
 

He made it to his sister's high school graduation in June. He was rail thin. He looked dead, like a vampire who has mistakenly wandered out into the light. It didn't suit him. He was miserable. But he was alive. He was there. My daughter burst into tears when she saw him, flooded with relief that he made it and sad, too, for the shell of the young man he'd become. He made it to his sister's graduation party after a night of hallucinations. The morning of the party we called 911 in desperate hope of getting him admitted. The attempt failed when the EMT told him that he couldn't make him go and left. But the party went on.

And it was an amazing party, mostly for what occurred beneath the surface. Our 'broken' family caused by divorce, had become a larger, more cohesive family. There we were: mother, mother's husband, father, father's girlfriend, son and daughter all celebrating our daughter's completion of high school. That was a miracle in itself. But there was something else: as broken and battered as our son was, he was there, facing the pitying and worried stares of neighbors who'd known him since he was a child. His arms were marked, his face sunken and pale. He flitted from room to room, trying to carry on polite conversations, but mostly avoiding them. His friend chaperoned him, guided him, provided him a sane reference point and all the while tried to coax him to get help. This was the very friend who, years earlier, we were sure would be the death of our son. Now he was his sober savior.

 

In the kitchen, my son and daughter stood for a moment, their backs to the chatting neighbors and friends. As he looked out the window, he said: "This is the last place in the world I want to be right now. But because it's for you, it is the only place I want to be." They both cried.

I, meanwhile, had the strangest feeling of absolute acceptance for things exactly as they were. For the first time, I marveled at what we'd gained, the miracle that he was there, that we were all there, gathering in honor of daughter and sister. Rather than the sense of embarrassment that had dogged me for so many years during his high school years, as I hid from neighbors in the grocery store, unable to face one more question about whether my boy was still playing soccer, I felt immense freedom. If there was judgment, I was impervious to it. Yes, I thought, this is my daughter who not only made it through high school despite her ongoing worry that her brother would not live to see her graduate; and yes, this is our son, diminished by addiction, broken and battered. But he is our son. There he was. He sat beside me in the garden at one point as I chatted with neighbors. I could feel him shaking, he body tense. It was like holding my toddler again. Then he went out front to smoke a cigarette.

Over the next few months, he prematurely bounced in and out of two different treatments, tried to replace old drugs with new, guaranteeing he would be part of every new drug trend that hit the papers. He grew hopeless. But sometimes recovery and the depths of addiction are exactly the same moment.

I cannot tell you exactly how it happened. Neither can he, though he contends it is a deeply spiritual process. But I can tell you what recovery looks like today on this glorious fall day: my son is eating blueberries by the handfuls. He is eating everything. He has gained weight and muscle. He rides his beloved fixed gear bike everywhere. He is in school, addicted to learning and getting A's. His skin is clear. He walks around shirtless, no longer hiding marks on his arms. He is even-tempered, more so than I can ever remember. He has his bad moods -- and so do I -- but he says he would never trade his worst mood sober, for his best day using. Sometimes he feels lonely, as climbing out of a cave can be.

He is struck by the emotions he must have caused in others, particularly his sister. Sober, he was able to be fully present for her leaving the nest for college. "I can't imagine what she must have gone through seeing me leave under such unhealthy and scary circumstances -- it's hard seeing someone go, even when it's for something good like college." Indeed, he feels everything again. As a deeply intuitive person, this can be a burden. He feels sadness in us all -- and he is never wrong about that. But healing begets healing. He is living with me and my husband full time. Our family, brand new and old, is real and does what a family should do: gives us the strength and encouragement to be the best we can be in the world -- as we are right now, this moment.

I am enjoying my son as I never did before. I am doing what I wish I had the loving detachment to do when he was a toddler: I sit back and just watch him go. I have no ownership of his progress, just as I'd finally let go of the idea that I could cure his disease. I can no more cure this than I can cure diabetes. I can only bask in the joy of being around a young man who feels good in his own skin, perhaps for the first time since he was taken from my womb. He is 21 years old. Life begins over and over, each moment, if we awake for it.