Undone

by Michele Cushatt

  Troy stood near the sink, and all three of our boys sat on barstools nearby. Even Tyler. Six months after he’d left, he’d come back home. Apologetic, ready to rebuild and reconcile with our family. Even so, the relationship remained strained for a time.

  “What’s wrong?” I braced myself for the worst. Why else would my husband and sons circle up late at night in the kitchen?

  “Have a seat,” Troy said. I obeyed. Then he turned to the boys. “I wrote a letter to Michele. I’m going to read it to her, but I want you to hear it too.”

  I didn’t expect that. He unfolded two pages of lined paper, and from my place on a stool, I could see his handwriting filled the lines with blue ink. Quite possibly the most words he’d ever written. Troy didn’t do things like this. Ever.

  What followed in the next couple of minutes were some of the sweetest words of affirmation I’ve ever received to this day. But the biggest gift came after the letter was finished.

  “Boys, I just told my wife a few of the things I love about her. Now it’s your turn. I want you to tell her one thing you love about her. One thing, that’s it.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. My teenage boys didn’t do this. They didn’t express emotion or affirmation except in grunt form. Would they resent him for asking? Would they even be able to do it?

  I didn’t have to wait to find out. Without a second’s hesitation, Tyler spoke up. The oldest. The son who ousted me at Disneyland. The one who walked away from our family when he was sixteen years old. The son I’d loved as my own but feared he’d never love me in return.

  He smiled. “I know she’ll always love us. No matter what.”

  Have mercy.

  In all of my mothering failings, I’d managed to get one thing right. Love. And it mattered most of all.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Ford and the Phone Call

  We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

  — DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, Life Together

  WHEN TROY AND I PASSED THE TEN-YEAR MARK OF MARRIAGE without shipping the other (or a child) to a barren arctic wilderness, we ran toward the next phase of our lives like a cat escaping a fire.

  Thank God! I think we’re gonna make it!

  By some miracle, we’d defied the odds, made a second marriage work. As a reward, our long-awaited honeymoon phase perched on the other side of our parenting.

  Something our friends called “empty nest.”

  Now, there was a time I thought empty nest a barren wasteland for washed-up parents. I loved being a mother more than anything else, couldn’t imagine my days without the noise and activity of my boys. Did life exist postparenting? No longer of any use, parents of grown children were relegated to assisted-care facilities, bridge-playing collectives, and Denny’s early-bird specials. Without children to feed, clothe, drive, and boss around, what in the world would I do with myself?

  Then adolescence hit. One, two, three boys, one right after the other. Ka-pow! And suddenly Troy and I knew exactly what we’d do with ourselves postparenting.

  Whatever we wanted.

  So we gave “empty nest” a more appropriate title.

  The Promised Land.

  (Insert the “Hallelujah Chorus” here.)

  Of course, launching our children into adulthood wasn’t all parties and balloons. My heart hadn’t grown completely cold and calloused. When Tyler graduated from high school, the year before cancer, I cried. Not a sweet, tender, “isn’t she precious?” cry. The sloppy, drippy, hyperventilating kind. For weeks before his graduation day, I stayed up until the early hours of morning pulling together pictures and memories for his school-years scrapbook. With each page, each picture and memory, I felt our family changing in radical and unalterable ways. Time wouldn’t be stopped. No more weekend camping trips. No more bedtime tuck-ins. No more pumpkin carving, Easter-egg hunting, and after-school cookie dunking.

  I mourned how quickly those little-boy years passed. One moment, it seemed like parenting would never end. The next moment, it was gone. And in spite of all the difficulties, I wanted it back. I thought of all the ways I’d squandered the time, griping over all the attitudes, sleepless nights, and unrelenting responsibilities. In the process, I missed some of the wonder of watching a child grow into a man.

  Too late. By the time I realized what I’d had, Tyler was crossing the graduation stage, diploma in hand. The scrapbook of his childhood was done. I cried for a solid month.

  Then, one year later and two weeks after Mother’s Day in Syracuse, our second son graduated from high school. Ryan. The son who cost us countless late nights working on last-minute science projects. The son teachers adored but couldn’t motivate. The son whose report card came with much fear and trembling. Not because he lacked the intelligence or ability. He simply had better things to do.

  So when Ryan’s graduation day came, neither grief, regret, nor sloppy-drippy crying made an appearance. Instead, joy.

  Abundant, unrestrained, high-fiving joy.

  Even so, tears would’ve been impossible to see. Instead, rain. Torrential downpours of it. It appeared God wept with joy at the prospect of our son’s graduating from high school.

  In spite of the weather, school administrators continued with the outdoor ceremony at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and friends covered themselves as best they could with ponchos, hats, blankets, and umbrellas, all of which proved futile while sitting in an open-air venue in a flood of near-biblical proportions.

  Most spectators left, unable to endure the elements to experience the entire graduation. The longer the ceremony continued, the sparser the crowd.

  Not us. No way. It had taken no small effort to get to this day. Like running a marathon and nearing the end, we weren’t leaving until we heard Ryan’s name announced over the loudspeakers. That was our finish line, when we knew administrators and teachers couldn’t change their minds.

  I’ll never forget his moment on the stage. To secure proof, we snapped picture after picture with rain-smeared lenses as he approached teachers and principal.

  Then it happened. His name over the loudspeaker.

  “Ryan Cushatt!”

  Cheers, whistles, and all sorts of raucous celebration erupted from the right middle bleacher seats, where a dad, stepmom, two brothers, and three grandparents jointly held their breath.

  We hugged and high-fived for a solid minute, grinning like children at Christmas.

  Finally.

  Finally.

  Later, I turned to my husband, nudged him in the ribs. “Congratulations, honey.” I laughed. “You graduated.”

  With Ryan graduated, our family now consisted of two boys post – high school and a third about to drive. The Promised Land was within reach. Peaceful, abundant, freedom-filled territory. I could almost taste the milk and honey.

  Within the week, Troy and I started dreaming of the second half of our lives. Imagining how we’d spend days and nights without demanding, hormone-fluctuating adolescent dictators ruling our household.

  Quiet sunset dinners on the deck.

  Early bedtimes in a silent (and clean) house.

  Saturday morning sleep-ins followed by breakfast in bed.

  A clean car without Gatorade on the upholstery and boogers on the windows.

  Yes, ma’am. The possibilities were endless. Glory hallelujah.

  Our first order of business was to sell our eight-passenger Ford Expedition: the Big Blue Beast. This I celebrated with great exultation. We’d bought it months after our wedding, the means to drive our three boys and their friends to soccer practices and school. It made sense, when gas was still less than two dollars a gallon.

  But I had a love-hate relationship with that SUV. It served our family well for ten years, didn’t break down or cause us any problems. But for a solid decade, I got nine miles to a gallon and spent the annual budget of a small country to fill it up.

  And I never could figure out how
to park the ridiculous thing.

  Now, with two of our boys driving, we no longer needed the Big Blue Beast. In front of our house sat a virtual parking lot of used teenage cars. We no longer needed the eight seats to transport a posse of boys to practice or youth group or school. Instead, we could downsize to something smaller with better gas mileage. Something easier to park.

  We found it soon after we started shopping. Used, yes. But the previous owner had been a young, single woman. Sans children. Let me say that again, no children.

  A cute, four-passenger, smoky-gray Volvo S40. Leather seats. Tinted windows. CD player. Moon roof. Twenty-five miles to the gallon. Not a booger in sight.

  Milk and honey, baby. Milk and honey.

  I fell in love with that car. Drove it all over Denver, windows down, music up, with all the sass of a high school girl on the pom squad. With the purchase of that adorable car, I transformed from a washed-up mama looking at assisted-living options into an energetic, middle-aged maven ready to paint the town.

  Empty nest, we’re on our way!

  I drove that car for three weeks.

  Three weeks.

  Then. July 19. Exactly two months to the day after Ryan’s rain-soaked graduation day.

  When the phone rang.

  Again.

  A second phone call.

  Eight months, several surgeries, and countless doctor’s appointments after the first.

  You’d think I would’ve been more prepared this time, ready for the ringing phone to rip through the landscape of my life. But this call brought as much surprise as the first. Perhaps more.

  Midafternoon, I sat at home, alone. Twelve days before, I’d had another surgery. A water bottle sat close by, the cold liquid the only real relief to the constant mouth pain.

  I felt the phone vibrate on the sofa next to me.

  Troy Cushatt.

  A glance at the screen identified my husband as the caller. I picked up. As I’d done hundreds of times before.

  He started with “Hi” and ended less than a minute later with “So, what do you think?” In between these ordinary words he said words that would change us — change me — forever.

  A woman needed our help, a mom who could no longer care for her three small children. Twin four-year-olds and a five-year-old. Crumbling under addiction, she couldn’t be a mom anymore, couldn’t even take care of herself. By some miracle, after years of struggle and resistance, she finally asked for help, for someone to give her children a home, food, love. And put their broken pieces back together again.

  Us.

  I held my breath, thinking, trying to hold an ocean of reality in too-small hands. This was the mother of all decisions, a life-hinging moment that would change every detail of our day-to-day. We knew this, even as Troy and I talked in rushed, staccato half-sentences on the phone. But we had no idea how much would change, what we’d gain but also what we’d lose in the gaining.

  “Will you take them?” the mother had asked.

  I wanted to scream, “No! Are you out of your mind?!”

  That’s the honest truth of it. Parenting hadn’t been a picnic the first time around. Good, rewarding, but anything but easy. Although I’d spent a lifetime dreaming of motherhood, reality turned out to be far more work and far less dreamlike. Perhaps that was the adolescence talking. We were still neck deep in the teenage years, dealing with all the chaos and conflict that come with living in a house full of hormonal boys. There was always someone vying for control, someone trying to assert his independence and strong-arm the grown-ups to the ground. It was exhausting, this parenting gig.

  Besides, I was eight months postcancer with zero guarantees about my future. Was it wise to take on such a responsibility? Was I physically able to do this thing, keep up with the needs of small children, when speaking continued to be a challenge? What about my boys? They’d already been through a rough year. Would they think we were crazy?

  Were we?

  We neared the end of our parenting marathon, bodies dehydrated and muscles weak. Only the sight of the finish line kept us pushing forward. “Just get through,” a family expert advised over radio waves. “Adolescence is tough, but just get through it.” We’d abandoned our expectations and settled for survival.

  And now someone was asking us to roll up sweaty sleeves and dig in one more time. For three children who would need even more than the first three. A mile from our finish line, we faced a choice. Run through to the end without looking left or right, front or back. Don’t allow for distractions or interruptions. Follow the course, finish the race. Be done with it, as planned.

  Or.

  Or.

  Loop back around and run the whole race again. Another 26.2 miles. On legs that have already wearied of the run.

  “Will you take them?” she’d asked.

  Scratch that. God asked, in a voice I’d grown to love even more over the prior eight months. Not audible, like my husband’s baritone or sixteen-year-old’s tenor. Instead, an urge I knew wasn’t rooted in my own emotion. An otherworldly whisper to risk, to trust.

  At that moment, I no longer saw a finish line, no longer felt the ache in my legs or sweat on my brow. Instead, I saw three small children with nowhere else to go. No more, no less.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s do it. We’ll take these kids. No question.”

  With those words, our second honeymoon ended as quickly as the first.

  And we started shopping for another eight-passenger car.

  CHAPTER 12

  Popsicles, the Park, and Jesus

  It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle that we are really after.

  — FREDERICK BUECHNER, The Magnificent Defeat

  A SINGLE SUITCASE.

  Child size. Maybe two feet across, less than a foot deep. Worn and frayed around the edges with a zipper barely holding things together.

  Inside, folded, sat the belongings of three children. Years of life packed into a two-by-one-foot space. A few shorts, skirts, and shirts. A handful of socks and underpants. Three light jackets. Pajamas.

  The owners of the suitcase — children — stood in the Walmart parking lot, between the car that brought them and the car that would take them away. The oldest, five-year-old Princess, stood shy and quiet, a little lady with long blond hair and the bluest of blue eyes. Jack and Peanut, four-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, stayed close to each other. They looked small, too small. Each gripped a blanket, the only scrap of familiarity in a world of unknowns. Eyes round and hollow, they looked at us.

  I knelt down, meeting their anxiety with my own.

  “Hi there.” I touched the smallest girl’s arm, tried to mask my trembling with both warmth and enthusiasm. “Do you remember who we are?”

  Two months before, we’d played together at a family wedding. At the time, we had no idea how important those brief moments of connection would be. In a Walmart parking lot on a Thursday in July, it made all the difference in the world.

  Heads nodded and mouth corners turned up in the first hint of a smile.

  They remembered. Thank God, they remembered. We weren’t strangers. We were the grown-ups who tickled and made them giggle over large slices of wedding cake and cups of fruit punch. The fear in their eyes faded, just a bit. I’m guessing it did the same in my own.

  Troy transferred their suitcase into the trunk of our tiny gray car, and I grabbed two small bags of toys. Everything they owned.

  “Mommy’s sick,” the five-year-old blurted, assuming leadership of the three. “We’re staying with you until she gets better.”

  I turned, surprised. She knew, at least in part, the reason for the suitcase. She searched my face for confirmation. I didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s right.” I offered my best smile. “We’re going to take good care of you while Mommy gets better, okay?”

  I wanted her to believ
e it, to know that I would love her like she longed to be loved. That she would be safe and protected, hugged and held, as long as necessary. The emptiness in her eyes told me she didn’t buy it.

  After one last goodbye to Grandma, we buckled three car seats and children into the back of our empty-nest car. I snapped my seat belt. Troy put the key in the ignition and pulled out of the Walmart parking lot and onto Interstate 25. With a final backward glance, I turned forward and looked up ahead.

  “Let’s go home.”

  There are three phases of parenting to which most moms and dads never want to return:

  Two-hour feedings.

  Diaper bags.

  And car seats.

  As Troy and I drove back to Denver, Colorado, with three children in tow, we privately high-fived the fact that we’d escaped the first two.

  But, God help us, car seats. Three of them. For four more years. With tiny little bottoms filling each one.

  Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.

  My brain couldn’t wrap itself around this new reality. So I kept looking over my shoulder into the previously untried back seat of my car.

  Yep. Still there. Three little people, going home with us.

  I grabbed Troy’s free hand, glanced into the back seat again. One drew pictures in the fog on the windows with her fingers. Two others drank Bug Juice out of bottles, a sweet treat Grandma picked up before the drop-off. It was just a matter of time before cherry red and raspberry blue spilled on the unstained floor.

  Fifteen minutes in and the empty-nest car was about to be initiated into parenting.

  We’re back in the races, baby.

  An hour later, maybe more, we pulled into our driveway.

  “Is this your house?” Princess, the five-year-old, asked as Troy put the car in park and turned off the engine.

  “Yes, it is. It’s your house now too.” We sat there for an extra second, breathing, before unlocking the doors.

  Troy unloaded the suitcase while I led the way into our house. A couple of feet inside the door, our black Labrador retriever, Nika, covered all three in sloppy wet dog kisses. I panicked for a second, not knowing how dog and children would get along. In seconds, gasps gave way to giggles. Who knew? A dog’s slobbery affection eased the initial transition better than any of our words.