“And what about all the trips you took later, after the divorce, with your dad to Arizona or Arkansas, when you got to operate a little Bobcat to help move rocks and soil around, just like the garden work crew? Or the time you went with your dad to Maine and got to float out on a boat with his friend Lennie to haul up fresh lobster from a wooden trap? No, let’s face it, kid. Your young years were pretty good—privileged, even. So, while it’s true that Mother Nature might have dealt you a wild card, you’ve still got plenty of good cards left to play. What you choose to remember, Dylan, is your own affair. I don’t feel sorry for you! Make your own life out of what you have.”
And for once, Dylan would be speechless—without reply. And then he would think about it all, maybe for a long time.
Well, there was no such showdown at the therapist’s office, but the two of us did have an appointment with Ms. Winchester coming up. By then, John had to leave for Blue Valley again, so I was on my own for the January 12 meeting in Darlene’s office at Drug Court. I felt a certain amount of apprehension as I made copies of Dylan’s proposal and my counter-proposal and stuffed them into a brown envelope to bring with me to the meeting. I felt like an attorney for an environmental group headed toward a confrontational meeting with a corporate officer and her agent. I wanted to be ready with documents to distribute all around. I picked Dylan up and we arrived, probably both equally nervous, at Drug Court headquarters. Darlene greeted us, offered us coffee, and took us into her office in a back part of the establishment. The office was paneled in dark wood and lined with bookshelves and stacks of papers everywhere. It could have been any professor’s office on campus. A vintage lamp shed a soft glow as we pulled up our chairs to Darlene’s desk, side by side.
Things didn’t go as expected. Instead of refereeing a battle, Darlene instructed Dylan and me to each write down our goals and expectations for him over the next few months. Then we discussed in more general terms how Dylan was progressing, what was holding him back, how he could move forward, how we were all working together as a team. It really was more like being at the therapist’s office. Not that it was exactly a piece of cake! The whole meeting took two hours and moved through some difficult landscapes. We talked about emotions: Darlene asked each of us what we thought love was, what did love look like? I said it was about taking care of each other; for Dylan, it was a feeling. As we responded, I could sense him pulling away from me; he had to assert his difference. The old hurts came out as Dylan remembered his childhood. I grew impatient as all these tightly held emotions surfaced, saying in exasperation, “I’m sorry your childhood wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t always there for you, but can’t we move on? What about all I’m doing for you now? Haven’t I shown you that I care about you? If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be doing this. I wouldn’t be here.”
Through this confrontation, I could see Darlene’s social-worker skills coming to the fore. She listened calmly and with empathy to both of us, but intervened at one point, saying, “That’s all in the rearview mirror, Dylan. We’re in a car and we’re going forward; we can’t just continue to gaze in the rear-view mirror—yes, a glance now and then, but overall, we’ve got to look ahead to be able to steer this vehicle forward.” She talked about new choices, new possibilities—not in a grandiose way, but very practically. Small steps, day by day—as in, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” This was a message my son needed to hear, and from somebody else besides me. Darlene reminded Dylan about a story one of the other Drug Court members told in group the other day, about how he was driving intoxicated and had an accident that injured his best friend. She talked about how others share about their painful experiences; we can feel empathy and compassion for them and so start to feel the same for ourselves when we need to. She talked about how we have to forgive.
I started to relax and step aside emotionally. Maybe I didn’t have to fight this out after all. It started to dawn on me that maybe I couldn’t save Dylan. Not alone, anyway. I couldn’t, but it was OK. He had probably already learned all he could from me. Now he needed to learn from others. And I knew they were out there, lots of good people: Darlene, for example, and Arlo, his sponsor in AA. Who knows how many others were in the different group meetings every week? Dylan would get to see he wasn’t alone. Others had their struggles, too, and they were all in there together, wrestling with them.
When it was time for us to adjourn, Darlene moved toward a conclusion. “So, do you feel comfortable working out your financial discussions on your own now?” Darlene asked. “Or do you need me to be present on another occasion?”
Dylan and I glanced at each other. I let it be his call, and we agreed to hash out payment proposals on our own. In any event, Ms. Winchester asked Dylan if it would be helpful to have a three-way discussion again periodically, just to clear the air from time to time. He thought it might, maybe spaced out every two or three months. We agreed to that.
As we left Darlene’s dark office and entered the cloudy light of day outside, a group was gathering in the courtyard, mostly consisting of burly guys. The whole Drug Court crew was assembling for a general meeting. Among them was a familiar face I nodded to. I couldn’t place him at first but I soon remembered this was Fred, the small-engine, moped guy who had the shop south of town. Even Fred was in Drug Court? Yes, yes, it was the men’s group, and they were of all ages, and Connor was there, too. Walking along through the gathering, it felt like the Red Sea parting, probably because I was with Dylan, and he was one of them. I even felt a rush of greeting and welcome from these assembled faces—one or two, anyway. What a tribe! They were greeting each other, standing in small clusters near a huge, gnarled tree in the front yard, hands in pockets or out to slap someone on the shoulder, ruffs of collars turned up against the cold. I noticed it was starting to snow, with thick flakes swirling around us, contributing to a feeling of celebration. Now, this will sound strange, but coming out of Darlene’s dimly lit office into this scene, it almost felt like those accounts of people who report near-death experiences and later say they went through a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it. People report feeling a mysterious, welcoming warmth coming from special beings who appear in order to escort them through a portal into a better existence beyond. Though I admit it seems doubtful that any of us in the courtyard were near death at that moment—or that the special beings referred to in these accounts were former members of Drug Court—still, you just never know how mysteries may be revealed in this world.
Right before I reached my car, Connor approached and said that he had a rent payment for me. He held out his hand and put several bills all neatly wrapped in half into mine, quite a wad. It was Thursday, payday at the engine factory where he worked. He was usually late in his payments, and I frankly wasn’t expecting this last one at all. As always, he looked me right in the eye with a steady gaze as he handed me the money. I took it and thanked him. I asked if he had found a new place to live, and he said yes. Dylan came up and was standing there, too, as if in solidarity. Snowflakes fell on their hair and jacket shoulders. By the time I finally drove away, I felt a completely unexpected sense of wellbeing. It wasn’t simply that I thought maybe things could work out after all. It was more in the nature of a revelation, an awareness that Dylan had sources of support in the world beyond himself—and way beyond me.
The following weekend, Dylan and I met again and ironed out a payment plan. With classes starting, we agreed he would forfeit a portion of his allowance “income” in order to pay, over time, the remaining court fee. He’d have to give up a chunk each week for a good while in order to make up the amount of the payment. We agreed he would bring it in person to the court. Fine, I thought to myself, and if you feel the pinch in your pocketbook, then maybe you’ll cast aside your fear and get a side job.
Then, a month later, in the middle of February, right before the next payment was due, a miracle happened. After my 11:30 Wednesday class, I read a text message from Dylan saying he’d received a
restitution payment of $1,100. Amazed, I called him, but he wasn’t available until later. Eventually, I learned that this amazing windfall was related to the robbery in Fairfield, just north of Cincinnati, three years ago. My mind flashed back to that occasion: Dylan was visiting a friend in a suburb; as he was leaving the apartment building, a thug and his accomplice who knew he had money on him held him up at gunpoint. Against the odds, Dylan fought to keep his money, but during the wild scuffle, which ended on the floor, the thug’s accomplice managed to grab the cash. (Don’t ask what Dylan was doing with $1,100 in cash on him; I’ve tried and haven’t gotten a straight answer. He agrees it was one of the stupidest things he’s ever done.) When they fled, Dylan was left alone on the floor, with a shoulder out of socket and a scalp wound. A friend drove him to the local hospital where he checked himself in. He survived the ordeal—another miracle—and Mom got to hear about it later. What a nightmare!
Now, though, I had to shake myself back into the present. “So, how in the world did it come about that you received a restitution check for that amount?” Dylan told me he had been working on it for weeks. Right after the incident, he’d reported the crime to the police, and a detective had come to speak to him. After that, he hadn’t heard anything and assumed the thieves hadn’t been caught. But recently, he’d looked up his name once again on Google, and he found among the listings of past traffic fines that an Ohio court listed him as having received a restitution payment for a theft. Dylan called the court in Fairfield County and told the clerk that his address had changed. He hadn’t lived in Cincinnati for over two years, and so hadn’t received any restitution payment that had apparently been sent there. The clerk said she would investigate the matter. Next thing he knew, a check from Fairfield County arrived in his mailbox here in town, right after he had taken the precaution of getting a mailbox key for the new apartment.
“I can’t believe it,” I told Dylan, dazed. For sure, I rejoiced with him at the good news. But in the very next moment, I also realized the danger of Dylan having a huge check in his hands. I asked him what he planned to do with it. Maybe I didn’t even have to: he volunteered that he at first wanted to keep it—what a prize! But then he remembered the large court payment hanging over his head ($734), $500 of which (or some of it, at least) had to be paid that very Friday. He said he’d pay off the whole fee, then wanted to put the rest into the bank. He even decided to put it in a savings account that would be harder to get to and would charge fees for withdrawing. I heaved a huge sigh of relief. As if to prove his good fortune, Dylan even sent me a scanned copy of the check via e-mail, and later showed me the receipt for paying off the court fee in Doran County. Even staring at the receipt, I could still barely believe all this had actually happened.
Later, I was of two minds on the whole restitution affair. On the one hand, I wasn’t so sure this deus ex machina resolution of the court fees was altogether for the good. What if it taught Dylan the lesson that he could avoid having to manage money wisely because some miracle would crop up at the last minute to save his ass? How would he learn to sacrifice what he wants now for what he may need later? Despite two parents giving numerous lessons on budgeting and looking ahead, these lessons hadn’t taken hold yet. On the other hand, I empathized with Dylan’s point of view that he had suffered an injustice earlier and, by reporting the crime and meeting with the detective, he contributed to the crime being prosecuted. Dylan had shown persistence and ingenuity in getting the money back.
For now, I could only be thankful, even with reservations.
Overall, I hoped this new adventure would give him a bit more confidence in the workings of the world—namely, that not ALL the cards in the deck were stacked against him. This unexpected restitution of lost money from the past, one enabling him to pay off his own debt now, might even start something. It might start to knock off some of that chip he carried around on his shoulder, the one as big as the state of Massachusetts.
CHAPTER 12: ATTILA THE HUN
For a long time, while my son was very young, I thought he was a smaller version of Attila the Hun. I thought he had only three settings on his dial: brash, bold, and barbarian. Every day there would be a whole list of transgressions: “Don’t eat all the chips on the table; don’t pull the dog’s tail; don’t yell so loudly!” Only gradually did I discover how sensitive he was. And despite his often unruly behavior and high-energy antics, I found out that this little kid had a core of common sense, even of justice. On occasion, he was capable of delivering some keen perceptions. At times, he stopped me in my tracks.
For example, there was the incident of the fish bowl. One day I was cleaning something downstairs, and when I turned around, I saw that Dylan was not just watching the fish in the goldfish bowl but starting to grab the bowl to give it a shake. I could tell he knew he wasn’t supposed to be doing that, but the temptation to riffle the waters proved too irresistible. In no time, the fish was subjected to earthquake tremors of alarming intensity. Not being the calmest person myself, I immediately reacted in alarm: “Don’t do that! That’s being mean to the goldfish; he doesn’t like it.” Of course, I zoomed right up to my son in a moment. When he just laughed and continued his earthquakes, I got very angry at him. I removed his hands roughly and shook his arms to show how it felt to the fish. “That’s what it feels like,” I said loudly. My son was surprised, especially when he realized how mad I was. My technique was working, but not quite in the way I imagined. It was more that my impromptu lesson in teaching Dylan empathy toward other creatures was starting to backfire. I realized that I had used way too much noise and force to make my point about being gentle. Even I was startled by my own anger. Dylan was scared and started to cry. “Mom, what you’re doing to me now is worse than what I was doing to the fish.”
At first, I was frozen in place by the truth of what he’d just said; in the next instant, I melted. I bent down and just hugged him while we both cried. He was so right.
There weren’t any more fishbowl quakes, but I found out it takes more than one rough lesson to learn empathy in life. And as often happens with a young parent, it’s not just the adult who’s giving lessons to be learned. So who was the barbarian that time?
CHAPTER 13: DEEPAK AND TUPAC
When Dylan reached school age, things seemed to be calmer, but there would still be episodes of extreme stress due to the pressures of two careers, childrearing, householding, and matching up all our schedules. In an attempt to solve some of the complexity, we decided to build a new house and move into town. When Mike first suggested this, I had been opposed. How could we give up our little house in the country? For me, it fulfilled a dream. But even I had to admit eventually that the dream was hard to maintain amid the pressures of real life for the three of us. Most of what we needed was in town. If we all lived there, I could walk to work; Dylan could soon walk to school. This would free up Mike’s schedule, allow him to do more projects and sometimes travel during the year. And soon, instead of Dylan needing one of his parents to take him everywhere, he could ride his bike. There would be other young kids in the neighborhood for him to play with, instead of just one little boy his own age nearby. We were all for independence, but living in the country often meant being isolated.
For a while, the design plans and the move kept us creatively occupied. The new house was an enormous work project. Then suddenly our lives were in place, but only on the surface. It would be easy to say that the difficulties of balancing two careers while parenting a child who could, at times, be difficult were the forces that did in the marriage. But even though these were both factors, I doubt they were the deciding ones. You can never know everything you need to know before you face challenges; the knowledge and skills need to be developed in the throes of the situation. At that point, I wasn’t learning very fast. My husband and I didn’t always agree about our ways of parenting when we faced difficulties. Sometimes it felt like we were pulling in different directions. In general, Mike was in favor of strict
rules for Dylan, while I was often more lenient, more ad hoc in my judgments. Naturally, this led to arguments. More importantly, Mike felt I wasn’t putting as much effort into my family as I was into my career. I felt maxed out in both categories. We sought counseling, which worked for a while, but that didn’t address the fundamental issues between us. Instead of trying to be mutually supportive or flexible, we became stubborn. Mike would insist that he was the reasonable one, he was right, while I was the emotional, wayward one. My anger and frustration went underground. I tried so hard to keep the lid on my true feelings that half the time I didn’t even know how volatile they were.
Things escalated. Instead of our differences complementing each other, they started to build up a residue of grievances and resentments. On occasion, there would be angry standoffs; each time, we would be set in our roles. First, he would goad and then, in a fit of self-righteous anger, I would explode. It was the opposite of taking conscious action—more like being swept into some diabolical mechanism beyond my control. Predictably, the delicate Jenga tower of our marriage fell apart. The uneasy truce was over. Coming back from a work-related trip, Mike quietly announced that he wanted us to separate. Things had changed; he was giving up on us.
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