One day in group, I read a note from Sara, age sixteen.
People see us as bad people because we have drank alcohol or smoked, people don’t take the time to study us, look past our actions. I may act tough sometimes and act like I don’t care, but the truth is I do care and I have a very soft heart. I just am that way sometimes because I have to put a wall up so I don’t get broken down and beat on.
When I finish reading, Megan, age seventeen, starts to cry. “I’ve ruined my whole life caring too much,” she says. Wiping her tears away, she looks around the group and smiles, almost apologetically. “I don’t know what just happened to me; I hardly ever cry.”
I think I know what happened—Megan saw herself in Sara’s story and, realizing that this was her story, too, she knew she was not alone. Someone else—a stranger, a person she doesn’t even know—feels the same way she feels. This person has built a wall to protect herself, just as Megan has done. And although Megan acts tough and pretends she doesn’t care, just like Sara, she has “a very soft heart.”
Sometimes we talk about shame—little shames, big shames. Vanessa, who is sixteen, tells a story about throwing French fries at an old man at a McDonald’s restaurant. “I was high on weed,” she tells the group. “I was showing off for my cousins, trying to be cool, talking bad stuff about old people—you know, how wrinkled and weak they are. And I threw French fries at this old man. I feel so sad about that day. I look back, and I feel so bad about the way I acted and what I said. I know that might sound funny because maybe it seems like a little thing, but I think about getting old and having young kids treat me like that, and I know I’d feel really bad. Maybe that’s what growing up and becoming responsible is about—you think about the other person’s feelings before you say or do things that might hurt them.”
“I did a lot of stupid things on drugs,” says Emily, age thirteen. “I used alcohol, cocaine, and crank, but weed was my drug of choice. I had blackouts all the time. Once I stripped in front of a whole bunch of people. I was just crazy, way out there. And when I used, I felt so dirty. My body felt like it was just sprinkled, covered with dirt. Your soul feels like that, too—just filled with dirt.”
Tony, age seventeen, is having trouble telling his story. His voice is all choked up. “I was drunk, so drunk I could hardly walk. And I saw this homeless guy just sitting there, not bothering anybody. He had a dog. His dog was probably his best friend. Maybe his dog was all he had. I started throwing rocks at him. I don’t know why. I was drunk; that’s my only excuse. I threw rocks at the dog, and the homeless guy started crying. He was begging me to stop, but I kept throwing rocks, and I hit the dog in the head with a really big rock, and I think I killed it. The man put his arms around his dog, and he just cried and cried. I got the hell out of there. But I can’t forget that. I can’t believe I did that. I will have to live with that memory for the rest of my life.”
“I’ve done so many terrible things to so many people I love,” Joe, age seventeen, says, hands clasped together, eyes on the floor. “I stole from my parents. I cheated on my girlfriend. I punched my best friend and broke his nose. I got my brother high, and he’s only seven years old.”
Samantha is crying. “I hated the way I was. There was no me. I was a horrible person who was mean to everyone. I cheated, I lied, and I stole from people. I even stole from drug dealers. Everyone thought I was so sweet and innocent. People just couldn’t believe I would do drugs. But I did. I was shooting up meth. And I thought I was pregnant. I didn’t care. How could I have done that? What kind of a human being am I?”
I am convinced that if we can unearth that shame, as searingly, scorchingly painful as it is, we can help these young people understand that they fit and belong in a world that seems to have turned its back on them. They want—they need—to talk about these private agonies. They need to know that others also feel shame, that we all feel shame for what we have said or done. If we open up the wound, bring it into the light, air it out, it is not so unbearable. Because it is shared. Because every human being on this planet lives with the shame of their mistakes, misdeeds, and imperfections.
One day after group, Colleen asks if she can talk to me for a few minutes. We spend more than an hour together. She tells me she wants to quit using drugs, go back to school, get a job, and help her grandmother, who is getting older and unable to take care of herself.
She sighs and looks at me, hoping I will understand. “I’m just so tired of the drama. People say I’ll never change. I want to prove them all wrong and get clean.”
Something fierce is growing inside this tiny young woman. I can see it in the determined look in her eyes and hear it in the intensity of her speech. She wants to live a good life. She wants to be a good person.
After Colleen is released from detention and placed on probation, we stay in touch. She stops using, goes back to high school, graduates, gets a job, takes classes at the community college. Today, eighteen years after I first met her, she has three children and continues to take care of her grandmother. She worries about her old friends who still use drugs, and she mourns the friends who have died.
The day before Mother’s Day, Colleen calls to tell me a story: “A good friend died a few days ago. Another damn overdose in this town. I should have known. I tried to contact him a few months ago, but he didn’t call back. I should have kept trying.”
She is talking so fast and crying so hard that I have to ask her to repeat herself.
“I know what’s next. I’m going to lose more friends; there’s nothing I can do about it. Unless we have some type of help. All people need is other people who care, who are genuine, and who are sober. We need to show people love and stop being so scared of them.”
She sighs, gathering her thoughts. “I’m just so frustrated. Six months ago I wrote a letter to a friend who died of an overdose, telling him what a good person he was and how much I would miss him. I’ll write another letter today. But that’s enough. I don’t want to write any more letters to dead friends.”
All people need is other people who care.
A story comes to mind. I first heard this story from my great friend and coauthor Ernie Kurtz, who taught me about spirituality, storytelling, and what it means to be human—which means to be imperfect, yet long for perfection, to be broken, yet crave wholeness. Ernie liked to talk about “beyond” and “between.” What lies beyond us, beyond our ability to possess or claim it, or even wholly understand it? What lies between us that sustains and supports us, allowing us to put one foot in front of the other, even after we stumble, even after we fall? Most important of all, Ernie encouraged me to think about how those two are connected—the beyond and the between—how hope and despair, helplessness and faithfulness, lack of control and embrace of community complement and complete each other.
Of all the hundreds upon hundreds of stories Ernie gave me, this is my favorite.
I recently heard a story of someone asking a monk, “What is your life like as a monk?”
The monk replied: “We walk, we fall down, someone helps us up. We walk some more; someone else falls down. We help them up. That’s pretty much what we do.”
This is why I bring the Juvie stories home with me. I want my children to understand that we are here on this earth to help each other. Because we will fall and we will fail—there’s no way around it. Bruised and bloodied, we will need someone to reach out and help us get back on our feet. We need others who will walk with us, steadying us along the way.
We may look different, but inside we are pretty much all the same.
We are all searching.
We are all afraid, at times.
We all build walls to protect ourselves.
And we all need to know that whatever we have done in the past, there is a pathway leading to a different future.
3
the hole inside
1999–2000
One day, in October of her senior year, Robyn sits down on the sofa next to me
. I’m working on a proposal for a column in our local newspaper, writing down ideas in a steno notebook.
“How are things going, Mom?”
“Good,” I say, turning to smile at her. “I’m working on this column idea. What if I title it ‘Straight Talk About Drugs’? Do you like that?”
“Yeah, that’s great,” she says. “So, can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure,” I say, closing the notebook and turning toward her. “What’s up?”
“You’ve changed, Mom,” she says softly. “It seems like you’re always sad.”
“Always?” I smile, but for some reason I want to cry.
“Well, not always. But a lot. I’m worried about you.”
I sit with her words for a while, reflecting on them. She’s right. I am sad. I cry a lot, sometimes for no good reason. This tightness in my chest is new—almost as if I’m holding my breath and suddenly I take a deep, long gulp of air and let it out in a rush. Not good—I know that from all those yoga classes I’ve taken over the years. “Don’t forget to breathe!” the teachers always say. That instruction sounded so silly to me when I first heard it—like, what am I going to do, not breathe? But then I realized how easy it is to hold my breath, almost in anticipation, as if I need to be prepared for the moment that is surely to come, ready with baited breath to jump in so I don’t miss anything.
Maybe I am a little depressed, I think. I ask myself, over and over again, what am I doing with my life? An even bigger question: What do I have to give to this world? I’m “unemployed” again, as writers often are when they finish a book or some other writing project. Having time on my hands feels good for the first few weeks, but then I get bored and distracted. All the everyday activities just don’t take up enough time—there’s nothing like writing a book to eat up the hours of the day—and I find them endlessly tedious and repetitive. I don’t like grocery shopping, for example. It seems like the silliest activity—walking up and down the aisles, putting all kinds of stuff in a cart, only some of which I really need, standing in the checkout line with all the lines around me moving much faster, so I switch lines and watch the line I used to be in speed up. Finally, the checker starts pushing my stuff through, fills up the bags, loads up the cart, which I roll to the car to unload everything, drive home, lug the bags inside the house, unpack them, and put all the stuff away. More often than not, I have to rearrange the refrigerator to fit the gallon of milk, yogurt containers, and bags of salad, while tossing out smelly old leftovers and limp carrots.
Then begins a whole new round of endless activity as I search through recipe books for meals to make with the groceries I have on hand—swearing and stomping my feet because, as usual, I forgot to choose the recipes first and make a list of exactly what I needed at the store. Always, always, it never fails, I forget something—chicken broth, soy sauce, crushed Italian tomatoes, an onion. The whole exercise seems so endlessly futile, because even after I go through the mess and drama of cooking and serving, I have to put the dishes in the dishwasher, run the garbage disposal, wipe off the counters, put the clean dishes in the cupboards. On and on it goes.
I don’t know what I’m complaining about. Pat does almost all the grocery shopping. He actually likes it, which is so interesting because he’s the introvert; yet, he always comes home with stories about who he ran into that day—friends, colleagues, students. Often he ends up chatting with the same people week after week. I wonder if maybe, for some people, grocery stores are second homes: colorful, crowded places to see and be seen and to feel part of a community. I’m always amazed when people in line ahead of me are so patient when the price doesn’t come up automatically, the checker apologizes for the delay, and the person shrugs his or her shoulders and says, “No worries, I’m in no hurry at all.”
Pat also does at least half the cooking and cleaning up—more than half when I’m working on a deadline—while I putter around trying to be helpful by emptying bags of salad into bowls and grating cheese on top.
Then there’s the laundry . . . and the beds to make . . . and the shoes all over the floor . . . and the coats tossed over the chairs and sofas. Our children are anything but neat and tidy (I might even call them slobs, but that word contains more judgment than I intend). The bathroom counters are filled with makeup and hair products (Ben is into hair gel these days), and every one of the kids steps out of the shower sopping wet, so the bath mat is always damp, the tile floor is slippery. Underwear, T-shirts, and dank towels are strewn all over the floor, and every cupboard is open, just waiting for a hip or a knee to catch an edge.
I get kind of a kick out of the mess, to be honest, because this is how I grew up—five children born within six-and-a-half years living in a three-story house in suburban Westfield, New Jersey, with every one of us running from swim practice to school to more practices—softball, football, baseball, cheerleading, and church choir—run, run, run. No wonder Mom sat in front of the TV most of the day, smoking one cigarette after another (Tareytons) and working on some needlework or crewel project. She created a smoky little corner of the house where she watched her favorite TV shows (The Fugitive topped the list), and she was perfectly content there, all by herself.
Thinking about the big old three-story house where I grew up fills me with an aching sense of nostalgia. I think about time passing, all that once was and is no more, and it is as if I have a hole somewhere deep inside. Life whistles through that empty space without filling in its creases and crevices. Lately, I seem preoccupied with the mysteries of life and the inevitability of death. The phone rings and, in a second, the world is upside down. Shortly after my fortieth birthday, my father is diagnosed with idiopathic (meaning “who knows where it came from”) pulmonary fibrosis. I’m convinced the pills he took for colitis destroyed his lungs, and that bizarre connection—soft bowels to hardened lungs—disturbs me. Maybe it was the flu shot his doctor convinced him to get that sent him into respiratory failure, although everyone says that’s not possible. But still, what if? He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he exercised every day, he filled his life with love and laughter, and he died at age seventy-four.
In his hospital room, we gathered around his bed and watched the heart monitor beep down, counting out the remaining minutes of his life. Somewhere around forty-five or fifty beats a minute, my mother leaned down, kissed him, and whispered in his ear. His blood pressure shot up ten or twenty points, before settling back down again.
“What did you say to him, Mom?” I asked, bewildered by the blood pressure spike.
She gave us a Mona Lisa–type smile, half-shy, half-pleased with herself. Holding my father’s near-lifeless hand, she lifted it to her lips. “I said, ‘Frankie, you always were a great screw.’”
We had never, not once in our lives, heard our mother say anything like that. With all the tears in that room, there was laughter, too.
Five years later, my mother is brain damaged in a car accident, but, stubborn Scot that she is, she bounces back to live on her own for several years before emphysema grabs her and takes her away. Those damn cigarettes.
Ruthanne, one of my best friends of all time, has breast cancer. Her son, Gregory, was born a month before Ben, and they are great friends, too. I take Ben with me to visit Ruth in the hospital, just days before she dies. She is asleep, and I lean over to kiss her. Ben asks if it would be okay to kiss her, too, and in the darkened room, on tiptoes, he gently places his lips on her cheek.
One of Pat’s favorite students dies suddenly of an epileptic seizure. The boy’s mother—a good friend and the principal of the elementary school our children attended—dies a few years later of brain cancer.
Robyn is leaving for college in the fall. I find myself thinking about what it will be like to have her so far away, to see her only every few months, to sit down to dinner without her. First there were five, and soon there will be four, then three, and finally just the two of us again. Life fills up and then empties out.
Robyn
is right. I am sad. Time is moving so swiftly. Not so very long ago, it was a slow-moving stream, with gentle eddies and playful pools. I think about mishaps and catastrophes coming so unexpectedly, with no warning. I hear, just a dull roar, the rapids ahead and feel the waters churning underneath me, deep and dark, as I’m carried along, no longer in control but pretending to paddle my way along as if I know what I’m doing. As the wind and water pick up speed, I hear in the distance, growing louder, the steep, bottomless waterfall that will claim us all.
I’m not afraid of death—I’m fascinated by it. The only true terror is the thought that one of my children might die before I do, which is why I love the story about the holy man who stays overnight with a farmer and his family. Before the holy man continues on his way, the farmer asks him for a blessing. A moment passes before the holy one speaks: “Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies.”
“That’s not a blessing!” the farmer sputters indignantly. “That’s a curse!”
“Would you want it to happen any other way?” asks the monk.
I’m addicted to reading obituaries. I scan them quickly to see if all is right with the world, meaning that those who died had their fair share of years on this earth. I read the first names, which are often dead giveaways—Rowena, Roland, Prudence, Parley, Eunice, Eugene, Gertrude, and Godfrey have most likely lived a good long life. I feel so happy when I read lines like this one about Willard, born in 1912, who met “the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen” while playing league baseball. I wonder, was she in the stands watching, thinking he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen? Was it love at first sight for both of them? Willard traveled to Missouri nearly every summer “to visit family, swim, float, or shoot fireworks over the Current River.”
Really, can life get much better than that? One day, every person on the obituary page was at least eighty-three years old. I read that page with a smile on my face, feeling a sense of peace knowing that the dead had a good shot at life. Those late-life obituaries make me feel good. Death is not a happy thing, but it comes to us all, and, like the blessing bestowed on the farmer and his family, we can only hope that it comes in the right order.
The Only Life I Could Save Page 4