By this time in our lives, Mike and I had developed a strong case of financial PTSD. Anyone with a close family member who has bipolar will understand: spending sprees, bounced checks, bank overdrafts, speeding tickets, court fines, impounded vehicles—these are just some of the Improvised Explosive Devices we’d encountered on the back roads of our son’s personal finances over his young adulthood. Not to mention psychiatrist bills, medications, special programs, and therapy. Mike was much more of a frugal money manager than me, but even I had to start putting up a few roadblocks, just to maintain solvency. And though it’s not in my nature to be an accountant, I had to turn myself into one. In this new, evolving situation, somebody had to monitor the ticker-tape figures zooming around at the speed of light, and that person ended up being me. I was determined to view the present expenditures as an investment, but it was far from certain how any of this would turn out. Somehow, I told myself, amid major scooter repair, a change of lodging, upcoming semester tuition expenses, and health insurance, the bills would get paid.
Mainly, I was just thankful my son was still in Drug Court. That alone was worth solid gold. He hadn’t dropped out; he hadn’t been kicked out, either. That was truly something to celebrate as year-end holidays approached. By Thanksgiving and then Christmas, as we prepared our feasts, I was feeling supremely jubilant. We all were. I’d even managed to get Dylan to attend a service at St. Alban’s, where Rev. Allison Marie offered up a celebratory prayer for us. Later, with our small family including John seated at the dining table, Dylan delivered his own spontaneous prayer of hope and thanks that he was actually moving through what he called “recovery.” As a mother, my heart rejoiced to see him responding so positively. Two years of Drug Court didn’t seem so long now, and the past three and a half months had been preparation for the long haul ahead. Dylan was signed up for classes in the new semester starting in January. In no time, he’d be a student again. There had been setbacks, but now it felt like we were finally coming out of the woods into more familiar territory. And when Dylan blew out the twenty-four candles on his chocolate birthday cake in December, I felt a wave of gratitude that we had all somehow made it through such a tumultuous year.
After dinner, we pulled on our coats and went outside into the bracing night air. “It feels good,” Dylan said. John liked it, too; the cold reminded him of winters in Canada where he grew up. Before he set off, though, John wanted us to see the constellation Orion, now right above us. Amazingly, that night the sky seemed so clear that even though the stars were far away, they seemed closer and brighter than usual.
“Do you see those three, perfectly aligned stars up there? That’s Orion’s belt,” John pointed out. All three of our heads tilted back to take in a huge swath of the sky overhead. The bright star belt shone like diamonds. “Orion’s the Hunter. Look down now from the belt and you’ll see two other bright stars; those are his knees, so you can imagine him standing there, strong, solid.” We admired the bold pattern, which John had shown me many times before. It was one of his favorites. I knew he wanted to share this ancient star knowledge with my son.
“And, if you look above the belt, you can see another bright star, there, on the right, that’s his left shoulder. Then, look across on his right side at those two stars above the shoulder level. See that one way up above where his head might be? They say he’s holding up a spear in his right hand—as if he’s poised to throw it across the sky with all his might.” We were all scanning the inky darkness far over our heads, trying to trace a man’s body in this far-flung array of stars. I glanced over at Dylan, calmly taking it all in. Did he see himself as the hunter, too?
Well, probably not tonight. I was just happy that he seemed relaxed, like things were going right for once.
John and I hugged him before he set off down the street. He turned and waved to us, and we waved back.
I’ve looked for reassurance many times in many places. Sometimes, looking for Orion’s belt on a cold winter night, knowing that it will be there, right overhead—that’s as close to certainty as a person can come by in this world. Sometimes, that’s reassurance enough.
CHAPTER 11: FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS
Shortly after all this positive change, one day in mid-January—not long before classes were to begin for spring semester, with Dylan aboard this time as a student—I received a phone call from my son. He told me casually that he wanted to discuss a time to meet with me to talk about how he was going to pay off his court fees. Aha—the topic of finances again! It was like Billy the Kid ambushing my stagecoach on the road. My blood pressure shot up: What now!? Was there no plan? Why am I involved in this? Nonetheless, with great difficulty, I managed to keep my cool and agreed to meet with him at my house.
The gist of the situation: Dylan was ready to move up to Stage Two of Drug Court, but he had to have a plan for how to pay off his court fees by February. He showed me the Court payment sheet: he owed $700 of an original $800 fee. (Later, I found out he was $200 behind in his payments, which were $100 a month.) I was not liking this. He began talking about a plan whereby, as with the moped repair, he would have me deduct a certain amount from his weekly allowance, and that would go toward his court fees. John and I were seated at the table across from him, since I’d taken the precaution of having reinforcements. I asked Dylan if he’d looked into getting a job at the car wash or at a local restaurant. All of those jobs were close by. Even if his moped conked out, he could get there; he could work on the weekends. Dylan told me he had looked but didn’t see any jobs available. I explained about the neon sign at the car wash flashing “now hiring” in bold letters. Resistance. I heard the usual statements: “I’ve looked for jobs, I have felonies on my record, and I don’t have reliable transportation. People think I’m too aggressive, not docile enough; they don’t want to hire me. I don’t like to walk; I don’t like to sweat, etc., etc. “ John chimed in: “You can get a job; you CAN earn the money.”
Despite January chill, the temperature in the room rose. Dylan was cornered and he knew it. Or maybe he felt outnumbered. He walked out of the house but came back after a few minutes to launch a new diatribe.
“John doesn’t have any right to say anything to me; I’m not his son. I’m nothing like his sons; I’m not smart; I’m a screw-up. Things are hard for me. I have anxiety problems, and I don’t get along with people.”
He cried out from frustration one second, then gathered up his anger and poked his horns into an imagined enemy the next.
“And then John was looking at me with a little smile on his face all during our talk.” Dylan grimaced for theatrical effect. “That’s being disrespectful.”
The smile. This reminded me of the scene with the moped in the abandoned scooter lot when I smiled at the wrong time, too.
“It’s not disrespect,” I countered. “I know John, and he does that sometimes when he feels uncomfortable.” The scene went on, but not for long. Dylan left again, threatening to blow it all up—quit Drug Court, quit college. I was upset, but by then I’d seen lots of these dramatic scenes come and go. Best to lie low and wait for it to pass. Even the imperturbable John said he should have put on his bulletproof vest that morning. He wasn’t used to household explosions—or at least he wasn’t until he met me and my son.
A bit later, my phone rang again. Dylan was now defiant. “I’m not going to jail because of you two. I’m going to figure out a plan. If I had come to you calm and with a good plan, you would have gone along with it.”
I talked to him and steered clear of showing anger myself. I stayed calm no matter what, using my mantra, “Be The Rock.” I remember saying, “You’re not a screw-up, Dylan; you’re very competent. You’re a smart person who’s made some bad decisions, and you’re not good at managing money.” Before we hung up, I added one more thing: “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
Not long afterward, he called again matter-of-factly—as if nothing unusual had happened—to request assistance with taking two giant tub
s of possessions over to his new apartment to help finish off the move. If this were anyone other than the child I gave birth to twenty-four years ago, I would not have given him the time of day. However, John and I decided to comply. Dylan was calm now, looked shaken, but was doing what he needed to be able to take up residence in the new apartment over several days. There was a limit to how much he could transport on a moped, especially in the rainy season. When we arrived at the new apartment, John got out to open the hatchback and then to help take out a tub chock-full of household possessions, following Dylan upstairs. Dylan thanked him politely. We took him back to his former residence and then left without further discussion.
A day later, Dylan called with another financial proposal: he mentioned a lump sum that he would forfeit from his weekly allowance money. I said he should draw up a plan. I also asked him the burning question that came to me in the middle of the previous night.
“Where is the $380 you got from selling the Kona bike a while back?”
“I bought a TV set.”
I fume. “Why didn’t you spend that on the court fees?”
“I forgot about them.”
“That was really dumb. You can’t forget court fees. You have to have a plan for paying them.”
He agreed calmly enough that he should have had one before, but he was making one now. He was only $200 behind in his payments. The day before, Thursday, he had met with Darlene Winchester at Drug Court, so he undoubtedly unloaded his frustration to her about his encounters with me. He’d already alluded more than once to his “mom issues.” According to him, Darlene said we should all three meet to talk and work out something. “Fine, sign me up,” I said. Overall, I noticed he sounded more together, more upbeat. As if to counter the pessimism of what he’d said before, Dylan told me he wanted to finish college. He believed he could get a job afterward, maybe at a restaurant, and work his way up. I detected that behind all his bluster and blowouts was a lot of fear. He was afraid of failure.
I left a message for Ms. Winchester at Drug Court. If she wanted to talk to me, I would like to talk to her, as Dylan proposed. When she called back, what she said reassured me somewhat.
“Dylan is making moves toward taking more responsibility,” she told me. “Things aren’t as bleak as you might think at the moment. He knows change is in the wind.”
It was if she could read my mind.
“Yes, I do think we need some help in establishing a healthier pattern of working out disagreements.”
Ms. Winchester went on to say that she couldn’t legally reveal anything to me until he signed a release form, which she would request. Then we could set up an appointment.
While out on another errand, I found out Dylan was having second thoughts about the threesome meeting. He wanted to take another try at just the two of us working this out and mentioned another plan.
“OK, I’ll look at it, but I still want to have that meeting. I’ve already called Darlene’s office.”
He jumped in. “Yes, she told me you had called and for me to sign some release papers. Why didn’t you call me to ask if you could call her?”
“Because you already said that the three of us were going to be involved in discussions, so I wanted to know what was going on.”
Later, after a five-minute trip to Auto Zone for a new moped part, Dylan requested to pass by Drug Court to sign the release papers, hesitating—probably to put it off until Monday—but then quickly deciding to go ahead. Soon, Darlene would contact me to set up a time for all of us. The important thing, I realized as the day wore on, was not to agree to anything until we all three met together. I began to see that having Darlene as arbitrator could be a real benefit. It would enable us to get beyond a confrontation and help keep me from being railroaded into something.
“I don’t feel sorry for you.” Now, there’s a statement for you. The way I saw it, ever since his teen years, Dylan had been telling a hard-luck story to, and about, himself. Strangely, he seemed to take a familiar comfort from it. In the narrative, he got a bad deal from life. First, he inherited a few scrambler genes that gave him mental health issues. Next, he got stuck being raised by incompetent parents. Nature and nurture both set against him from the get-go. After that, bad friends, bad breaks, bad luck. Because of this, his parents—and the world—owed him big time. Even God owed him (if Dylan believed in God). It was as if there was a huge chip on his shoulder that he was always carrying around, as if he’d cribbed his lines from Tupac Shakur, “Me against the world.” He saw himself as a marked man. Because of all this unfairness, there was a grudge debt out there, always accruing interest. But what he didn’t realize is how this accounting system, where it’s the other person who pays, kept him from taking charge of his own life.
The worst of it was that, as his mom, I bought into that grudge debt for a time myself. I admit to feeling guilt that I didn’t spend more time with my son when he was very young, that I wasn’t more patient, more understanding of this little kid who was so different from me. I’m sure I’ve got more than a couple of black marks on my slate to account for. Why was I trying to write articles in the summer instead of being caretaker of my four-year-old son? Would things have been different on an emotional level, at least? Then there was the guilt I felt about not doing enough to make the marriage to Mike work out. Had I been immature and selfish? Probably. But I remember the choice I made back then: to do what I could be good at, where I could be rewarded for my efforts. I put a lot into my career, where at least I had some control over outcomes. There wasn’t much of that in my home life.
After the divorce, I wasn’t too pleased with the way Mike used his time with Dylan to explain why he left, probably detailing all my emotional high crimes and misdemeanors. Years later there was the undergrad psychology course Dylan took at the University of Cincinnati, the one on the importance of childhood bonding and what happens to kids who don’t have a good bond with their parents—especially, crucially, all-significantly, with their mother. That clinched it: I fell from trusty mom who stood by him to doghouse mom who abandoned him. The scales fell from Dylan’s eyes, and he saw the real me, a fallen creature. Now I owed him, big time.
My temperature rose as I thought of this. I saw now it wasn’t just about the endless streams of financial support for Dylan; it was about emotional debt—barge loads of it. Regarding his childhood and early teen years, it seemed to me he had a selective memory for the “bad parent” stuff. After all, if as a parent I’m held guilty of cherry-picking only the most mutant, ancestral genes to pass on to him, then he can be held guilty of picking out only the worst of times to remember and hold on to. That’s more of a real choice, isn’t it?
It all made me want showdown time with Dylan—the kind you can have in a therapist’s office. There’s a technique in which two chairs are set up opposite each other with a five-foot space between. The client sits in one chair, and the other one remains empty. You can imagine anyone you want in the other chair. The idea is to tell that person everything you want to say, all the resentments you’ve been harboring up inside for years. You can wave your arms, yell, punch, whatever … but mostly, you talk. Of all the people on the planet they could possibly choose, most individuals will put one of their parents in the hot seat before blasting away for half an hour. There’s seemingly no end to that person’s crimes and shortcomings, no end to the repressed venom that has to come out. This power wash is not needed by everyone, of course—just people with emotional residue to clean out of their drainpipes.
In my twenties, I myself would have hauled my own dad into that chair for sure. As for emotional grudge debt, I’ve kept my share, even over small stuff. When Dad was a poor grad student with bills to pay, he wasn’t always the most even-tempered person; I remember plenty of irritation spilling over, mostly onto me when I was recruited as the hapless assistant on household repair projects. Then much later, as a college student, I remember being bummed that while all my peers had driver’s licenses, I didn
’t. This was because my dad took us all out to the West Coast for a semester during the time I would have taken Driver’s Ed at my home high school. Of course, the whole family experience was way more educational than a mere driving course, but later I added that example to my growing list of “Dad aggrandizing his career at the expense of his family” wrongs. I held on to that grudge for a few years, too—still not driving—until one day a friend said, “Well, you could always sign up for a Driver’s Ed class at the university. I know someone else who did that just last semester and now she’s getting her license.” Even after this blazing lightning bolt of revealed wisdom struck me, it barely put a crack in the hard, little shell of my grudge. It took a while for the juice to run out. But by the time I started my first driving lesson in a snowy football stadium that next January, my resentment had mysteriously disappeared. I was free to take action for myself.
Now, for me as a parent, the shoe was definitely on the other foot. I knew what it felt like to be in that hot seat across from Dylan as a Bad Mom, and I’d felt the burn. But that day I wanted a role reversal. I was putting my son in that chair and doing a riposte. I’d look right at him and say this: “Look, you may think you had it rough and were miserable one hundred percent of the time, but your picture of things is NOT accurate! What about all the memories (not to mention, documented photos) I have of you—yes, you—smiling, running, climbing, and laughing your head off? Do you remember any of that?
“You had great visits with grandparents and friends, went to wonderful schools with attentive teachers. We parents may not have been ideal, OK, but at least we showed up. We did as well as we could at the time. What about all the fun trips we took to places where your dad worked on gardens? How about the time you and I went across the sagebrush desert outside of that town in Colorado on our mountain bikes? After pursuing the trail, we bravely went along a precipitous roadway edge all the way down to Woody Creek Tavern where you had a grilled cheese sandwich in the shape of a teddy-bear face and some root beer. Hey, now that’s living! You were only about seven years old, doing ten miles or so on a bike. Talk about adventure! We made it there and all the way back, too, which wasn’t so easy in the heat, but we took sips of water from our bottles and found a tiny bit of shade under one of those scrub bushes—just enough—until you could go on. And later, we were proud of our accomplishment. You did an amazing thing for a young kid. With me. Did you forget all that?
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