Tag Archives: codependency

The Choice

Leave a reply

This is the second in a series of posts, starting with this one.

—

I was unmarried and pregnant with a one-year-old baby, on welfare, living in public housing.  I was 19.

I had just started to feel better about myself and the future.  The first pregnancy had been due to carelessness.  This time it was due to birth control failure.  It was painful knowing people thought I was stupid.

I had just gotten rid of my pet rat, Smiley, because I couldn’t afford to feed him.  If I couldn’t afford to feed a rat, how could I afford to feed another kid?

—

I had gone to a doctor because I was exhausted.  His name was Charlie Brown, believe it or not.

I figured he would say I was anemic.

He laughed a yucky laugh when he saw the look on my face.

“That’s what happens to girls like you.”

“What?” I was confused.

“Girls who sleep around shouldn’t be surprised when this happens.”

“But it’s the same father.”

He glanced at Vince as though he was a cockroach.

“So the father is white?”  He lowered his voice.  “I know some people who would pay handsomely to adopt this baby.”

If a doctor named Charlie Brown said this to me today, I would punch him in the face, then sue him.  Instead, I thanked him mechanically and never returned.

—

In spring semester I would take Statistics, English Literature, and part two of Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Abnormal Psychology.  My favorite class was Pathology.  The Hennepin County medical examiner taught it; his name was Vincent which I took as a good sign.  It was basically one long gruesome slide show—or should I say, sideshow.  There was the guy who had been decapitated when his snowmobile ran into a barbed wire fence, a baby born without a brain, and a glistening, five-foot-long tapeworm with eye-like markings.   I loved it.  I didn’t want to drop out.

—

I went to see a social worker at Catholic Charities.  Her name was Judy.

“You could give the gift of life to a childless couple!” she exclaimed.  I had an image of her as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, drooling and flapping her little claws over this baby.  This white baby.

I didn’t care about helping some rich couple who probably lived in the burbs and had a foosball table in their basement.

“I don’t want Vincent to be an only child,” I said.  My siblings and I didn’t always get along, but I imagined being an only child as very lonely.

“You can always have more children,” said Judy, “when you’re married.  You’re certainly fertile!”

—

My psych instructor gave a lecture on “high risk youth,” the new buzz phrase.  There were certain early experiences, like being beaten, locked in a basement, or put up for adoption, that caused youth to become drug addicts, criminals, and psychotic.

“Statistics show our prisons are full of men who were abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents—usually single mothers on welfare.”

My best friend from high school was adopted.  I thought about the times I had seen her mother belittling her.  “You’re so fat!  Are you going to wear that?”  What if I gave this baby up for adoption, which I now understood was an act of abandonment, and his new parents abused him?

—

I told some of my classmates and they urged me to have an abortion.  “At this stage it’s just a clump of cells,” they reasoned.  This was true, but I couldn’t have an abortion so soon after giving birth.  I couldn’t explain it.  I just couldn’t do it.

“Don’t be a tool of the pro-lifers!” the one male student in my class said.  That was a valid concern too, but I had to set it aside.  Choice meant choice, right?

My mother didn’t tell me what to do.  “If you go through with adoption,” she said, I don’t want you anywhere near the family.  It’s got to be our secret”

Sad Mom

The Dilemma

1 Reply

Vince has mentioned in his blog that he would like to write about his brother, so I should probably get out ahead of that.

—

It was 1979.  Nine-month-old Vince and I lived on the 18th floor of Skyline Towers, a subsidized 24-story high rise overlooking Interstate 94.

I had just started my second year of college.  In the spring I would earn my two-year Occupational Therapy degree.  I would be able to get a job and get off welfare, maybe even move out of public housing into a quaint little brick four-plex with wood floors and a stained glass window.  That was my dream.

Here was my routine:

5:30 am: Get up, shower, feed baby Vince

6:00 am: Strap Vince into the collapsible stroller, put on the old beaver fur coat I had found at the Salvation Army and the moon boots I bought new after saving all summer.  Sling my backpack full of text books over my shoulders, and head down the hall to the elevators.

Moon Boots

6:15 am: Exit the front door into the winter morning darkness.  Cross the parking lot, then the pedestrian bridge over I94 where the wind was always biting.  Push the stroller across the athletic field on the other side of the freeway (extra hard if there was fresh snow on the ground), then walk two blocks to drop Vince off at daycare.

6:30 am: Pry Vince off me, ignoring his crying and screaming.  Ignore the guilt.  I had to do this to get ahead, to better our lives.  Walk two blocks to the bus stop.

6:45 am: Catch the 21A to Minneapolis.  This is a slow bus that stops at every corner.

7:30 am: Catch a second bus that drops me off a block from school.

8:00 am: First class.  Study and go to class all day.  Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, Abnormal Psychology, Medical Terminology, and Fundamentals of Occupational Therapy.

4:00 pm: Repeat above, only backwards.  Sometimes necessary to stop at the grocery, which slowed things down considerably because I had to haul the stroller and one of those little-old-lady shopping carts.

Cart

6:00 pm: Arrive home, make dinner, feed Vince, clean, pay bills, make phone calls, etc.

7:30 pm: Put baby to bed.  Thank god he is such a good baby and loves to sleep.  But I still like our routine of reading books, singing songs, and rocking.

8:00 pm: Study for a couple hours, in bed by 10.

—

Then I found out I was pregnant again.  I had been using birth control and breast feeding.  Taken together, these were supposed to protect me against getting pregnant.  Lucky me, I was one of the one out of a hundred or whatever who did.

—

I’ve written about the guy Vince and I call The Creep.  Why had I let The Creep anywhere near me after Vince was born?  Because I felt obligated.  He was Vince’s father, after all, and my boyfriend.  Even though he was terrible at both, I was a doormat.  I can hardly believe this was me—it feels like it happened to another person.

—

I loved being a mother.  But how could I keep up my schooling with two babies?

I loved babies.  But how could I be a good mother to two of them?

I loved college—I was the star pupil in my class.  But how could I keep it up with two kids?

—

I told The Creep.  He looked like a badger caught in a snare.

“I spose we have ta get married then, huh?” was his response.

I don’t know what I had wanted from him, but it wasn’t that.

I told my mom.  She was furious.

“This will kill your grandma,” she said, and she wasn’t exaggerating.  My grandmother had run into the bathroom and thrown up when I’d told her I was pregnant the first time.

I told the head of my school program.  She looked so disappointed.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, not expecting that I’d have any answer.

 

Tumblin’ and Floppin’

Leave a reply

What was I thinking when I gave Vince a rock tumbler for Christmas? It’s his long-time hobby, and this is probably the third one I’ve bought him, but it’s the first time I’ve lived with the sound of it, cruncha-rugga-chugga-rugga 24/7. I don’t know how he can sleep with it in his room. .

—

Here’s an update on Vince’s and my living-together situation.

If I come home and he’s in the living room, he immediately gets up, goes to his room and shuts the door, and doesn’t come out again until the next morning. If I’m the one in the living room when he comes home, he goes straight to his room and doesn’t come out until the next morning. He doesn’t slam the door, so there’s nothing to point to and say, “Stop doing that!”

When we run into each other in the morning, the exchange is:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“Have a nice day.”

“You too.”

When I ask, “What are you up to today?” he tells me, but there is a tone, as though he thinks I am prying. If I call to him inside his bedroom, there is a long pause during which I imagine he is rolling his eyes, and then a drawn-out, “Yeh-sss?”

I managed to catch him long enough one day to say that people who live in the same house usually talk to each other now and then. He seemed to think I was trying to trick him into talking.

Things came to a head on Christmas day. I found myself crying in my room (into a pillow, so Vince wouldn’t hear, because I didn’t want him to think I was trying to manipulate him). I had been out 16 of the last 18 nights, trying to give him space.

I was tired. I had lost perspective. Was it nosy to ask, “How are you?” Was everything I did annoying? Was the sound of my voice noxious? Should I confront him? Try to be nicer? Suggest we go to counseling together? Ask him to move out? Go live in a motel? Was I acting like a martyr? Maybe if I bought some non-floppy slippers—because surely the sound of my footsteps must drive him crazy.

—

I recognize Vince’s behavior because I’ve acted the same in the past.

I had a roommate; I’ll call her Irene. She was from Ontario and taught theology at a local private university.

I could not stand being in the same room with her. Everything about her irritated me—her denim dresses and sturdy shoes, the giant jar of Branston Pickle in the fridge, the fact that her favorite color was navy blue.

When I heard her key in the door I would scurry to my room, silently shut the door, and not emerge until I knew the coast was clear. If she tried to make conversation I would deflect it with a curt answer and a stiff demeanor. If I did have to communicate something to her, I left a note on the dining room table.

Poor Irene! She was such a nice person, a good person. She had a sharp wit and obviously was no dummy. We could have had great conversations if I had been open to that. She was also wise, I see in retrospect, because she never got ruffled by my behavior, never seemed to take it personally.

And it wasn’t about her—I can see that now. It was about me being laid off from my job, Vince being missing for the umpteenth time, and other stressful events I can’t even recall now.

So Irene, if you ever read this, I apologize unequivocally. I was horrible to you. Better yet, I will write you an email after I finish this post, and apologize directly.

—

Vince, here is my version of a note on the dining room table to you. You’re doing so well (a job, a car—health insurance! 19 months of sobriety!). But I know it’s hard to have a social life under the probation restrictions. The solstice has passed, the days are getting longer, soon your time “off leash” time will double.

Now about that rock tumbler….

Lasagne, Interrupted

Leave a reply

I came home from work, tired and famished.  I was lifting a big slice of lasagna out of a pan to a plate when the landline rang.

This is the phone I am required to have as a condition of Vince’s probation.  He was in the shower, and the phone is in his room.  I respect his space and don’t go in there except to the do the laundry.  (He shares his tiny space with the washer and dryer.)

Brrr-ing…brrr-ing…brrr-ing….  I stood with the lasagna poised between pan and plate.  It stopped.  Then Vince’s cell phone started up—vvvbbbb….vvvbbbbb…vibrating on silent.  It went on and on and still I stood drooling over my longed-for lasagna.

I heard the shower shut off and Vince’s voice, “Hello?  I’m in the shower.”  He repeated himself.  Did the person on the line not believe him?  Then: “MOM!  Will you let the agent in?”

I lowered the lasagna into the pan—it was lukewarm now anyway—and went to the front window.  Yep, there she was, sitting in her car at the bottom of the stairs.  I moved to the front door and opened it, waving down to her.  I stood waited while she got herself out of the car and moseyed up the stairs.

Do not sound sarcastic or mad, I told myself.

“Next time, why don’t you knock on the door?” I suggested.

“Oh, yeah!” she replied, as though she had never heard such an idea.

She stood in the dining room with the urinalysis cup while Vince threw on some clothes.   She smiled, I faked a smile back.  Vince entered the room, retrieved the cup from her, then returned to the bathroom.  As he was returning down the hall, the agent said loudly, “Be sure to tip the cup on its side so the urine gets on the test strip.”

Yum!

Maybe I should have exited at that point but I didn’t realize she was going to linger.  And did I mention I was hungry?

Vince sat at the dining room table.  The agent and I stood in opposite corners in the room.  I was half way into the kitchen, with one eye on the lasagna.

“How’re things goin’?” she asked.

“Fine,” was his reply.  He told the agent he was planning to buy a $300 car.  It would help him get around quicker and he could tinker with it on “the property” which includes the parking lot of the condos where we live.

“The big challenge,” I volunteered, “will be for him to find a landlord who accepts ex offenders.”

“That is a big problem,” she said, “Most landlords take advantage of them, because they can.”

My crabbiness quotient quadrupled.  Or maybe it was just plain anger.  Well, I’ve rarely had a good experience with a landlord, so why was I shocked that they would exploit ex offenders?

“We do know a guy who is open to ex offenders, and fair,” she continued.

One landlord in a metropolitan area of 3.5 million people.

She told Vince she would get him the landlord’s information, and left shortly thereafter.

Finally!  My lasagna.  I sat across from Vince and when I saw his face I thought, “Oh no, I’m in trouble now.”

“Mom,” he began slowly, as though he was talking to an utter moron, “Don’t ever bring things up to the agents.  Now the next time one comes, they’ll grill me about why I want to move out.  ‘What’s wrong at home?’  ‘What’s going on with your mom?’”

“But…last week you told me you had that tip on a sober house.”  For a few days we had both been excited but it fell through.  “You want to move out, don’t you?”

“Yes, but we agreed I could stay a year.”

“Yes, but…you were talking about that house….  I thought she might have some resources.”

I ate my lasagna without gusto and offered him some, which he accepted.  “Do you really think I would try to get you in trouble, on purpose?” I asked.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said.

Just like when he was inside, I didn’t know the rules until I broke one, and trying to be helpful only got me in trouble.

A Draught Experiment

1 Reply

Because my son lives with me and is on intensive supervised release for a 50-month prison sentence, I am not allowed to have alcohol in my house.  Or drugs.  Or weapons.  But I wouldn’t even know where to get my hands on either of those.

I have to admit I was worried that I couldn’t do it—not have alcohol in my home.  Over many years I had developed some habits.  Living alone, there was no one to question them.

It went like this: I would get home and have a beer or a glass of wine.  Then another one, and sometimes another one.  Especially if I was into some TV show, it was easy to just keep the wine bottle on the table next to me so I wouldn’t have to get up and walk to the fridge for a refill.

This was my habit almost every night, except for the occasional night I went out for happy hour, which just involved a different venue.

So I really wondered—what will I do—now that I can’t drink at home?  Was I really an alcoholic after all?  Would I sneak alcohol into the house?  Drink it in my car in the parking lot?  Would I stoop, literally, to drinking in the unheated, spider-web-filled basement?  Would I be going to happy hour seven nights a week?  Would I start stuffing my face with cookies or driving out to Mystic Lake Casino to gamble, as a substitute?  Would I go through withdrawal?  Would I have to check into Hazelden and if so, could I get a family discount since my dad, Vince, and however many cousins were alumni?

I had a notion that this could be an opportunity, but I didn’t know for what.

—

It’s been three months since Vince was released.  Not drinking in my home has not been a problem.  I joined a private club that’s a block from my house with the idea that I could amble over and have a few cups of cheer without having to drive home.  It’s a nice place but I learned that I don’t like going to the same place all the time, so I dropped my membership after a few months.

I haven’t gone wild with cravings.  I haven’t snuck alcohol into the house except once or twice, when I stopped at home to change in between the liquor store and going out to a dinner party.  I am not aware that I’m eating any more.  Once in a while I do wish that I could watch my favorite TV program and have a glass of wine, but it’s not a huge deal.  I have enjoyed going out for happy hour twice a week or so, with different friends to different places.  I have also found myself shopping more, but that could be because I just bought a new house and I need stuff.

But here’s the unexpected result: I’ve lost five pounds without even trying!  I can only assume it’s from all the alcohol calories I’ve passed up.  I’ve tracked my drinks and calculated that I’ve foregone over 8,000 calories since Vince moved in.  Thank you, Vince!  I’m probably not watching as much TV, either, because without my sedative of choice I don’t get lulled into a stupor in front of the boob tube.

When Vince mentioned last week that he had a lead on a house share situation, I had mixed feelings.  I was happy for him but worried about myself—would I quickly revert to my former habits?  Maybe I could keep up a self-imposed ban on alcohol in my house.  Right.  Uh huh.

The house deal fell through, and I was relieved.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

3 Replies

Today is the third day of Hannukah, a minor Jewish holiday that has morphed into more than it was ever meant to be because of its proximity to Christmas.

And that’s fine with me.

Hanukkah, which is spelled many different ways, marks the miracle that took place in what remained of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabees (Jews) rebelled against the Greeks, who destroyed the temple.  This was 200-some years before the first Christmas.  Got that?

The story goes that the temple was purified with an oil lamp which miraculously burned for eight days even though there was only enough oil for one.

Most Jews, even the atheists like me, own an eight-branched candelabra called a Menorah which they dig out once a year for Chanukka.  Where I live, Jews comprise only one percent of the population, and so I have to drive across town to the one store that carries Hanuka supplies.

It’s a challenging time of year for families where part of the family is Jewish and another is Christian.  I say, why not enjoy both?  My tradition with Vince has been to wrap eight gifts and let him choose one each day.  Every year he gets a $2 bill, a pair of socks, a bag of Lemonheads, a couple other jokey little things, a thoughtfully chosen book that he’ll never read, and then a “real” gift like a Target gift certificate.

So we lighted the first candle on Monday night, and Vince got his $2.  I opened his present to me and it was an LED light bulb.  Clever!  Perfect for the festival of lights.

—

As I drive home in the dark from work, I am loving the Christmas displays on the big houses along my route.  Some are garish, some are tasteful, but they are lights–that’s what matters.

LightsLights2Lights3Lights 4

I’ve been meeting friends for happy hours in the most beautifully-decorated watering holes, like the lobby bar of the Commodore Hotel.  I organize a family outing or get together of some sort every year.  Last year the female relations got dressed up and went to Anthony Scornavacco Antiques and Heimie’s Haberdashery, which is located where my grandfather’s haberdashery was before he lost it during the Great Depression.

This year, I’ve invited my nieces and nephews over for a Cousins Cookie Baking Party.  Yep, we’ll make Hanukkah hedgehogs, gingerbread men/women and perhaps some transgendered persons or hedgehogs, and there will be some kind of dairy-free cookie for the vegans.

hedgehogs

—

Obviously I’m doing everything I can to make the short cold days of December more bearable.  I thought I was doing pretty well.  But then I got an email from the Rabbi who is the chaplain for Minnesota prisons.  She had contacted me shortly after Vince’s release to offer various kinds of support to him.  I don’t know if he responded to her, and I don’t need to know.

She was just writing to wish me a Happy Hanukkah and to say she was thinking of us and hoped we were doing well.  I was at work, at my desk with dozens of people around, and I got all choked up.  Why?  Because she was kind.  It’s always kindness that gets to me, not meanness.

She didn’t have to contact me, after three months.  By doing so, she acknowledged that our situation is challenging.  She offered to help in whatever way she could, but just knowing that someone was thinking of me and Vince was enough.  I’m starting to tear up again now, just thinking about it, so if there is someone you are thinking about but you haven’t told them, think about doing so today.

Poppies of Expectation

1 Reply

There’s a saying: “Expectations are disappointments in the making.”

That sounds so cynical. And as with all self-helpy kinds of things, I had to struggle with this concept intellectually before I could accept and employ it.

Some expectations are reasonable. I expected Vince to graduate from high school. I was bitterly disappointed when he didn’t. In this case the saying still holds true but you couldn’t fault me for the expectation, right? It’s a pretty minimal one held by most parents. (Vince has since earned his General Equivalency Diploma and finished two years of college.)

But there are other expectations that are unreasonable.

Vince wrote numerous times from boot camp about how he had spent four hours scrubbing the baseboard in the gym, or all day moving manure from Point A to Point B, or how he made his bed with sharp corners and ironed his clothes with exact creases. This was not the Vince I knew from before boot camp. “Wow!” I thought, “How wonderful that he’s learned to be a perfectionist clean freak like me!” I looked forward to him moving in. It would be great to have someone else in the house who would wash windows, dust and vacuum, wash the car (and here I got really carried way), paint the spare bedroom, clean the spider webs out of the basement, tear up the old patio and cart all the bricks away, maybe even wallpaper the dining room!

Ha. Suffice it to say that none of those things has happened. And why should they? Vince met the expectations of boot camp because his freedom was on the line. I had never even voiced my expectations to him—I was barely aware of them myself.

The progress I’ve made is this: I used to be completely unaware of my expectations, then feel shocked when they weren’t met. Now I catch myself—maybe not in the moment but eventually—and I laugh at myself a bit. The only disappointment I feel is in myself, for having unrealistic expectations.

Vince will never be a neatnik like me, but he does clean up after himself. He takes out the trash and puts gas in the car when the tank is low. He picks up items at the grocery that I forgot to get the day before. He replaces the toilet paper when it’s gone. He makes ribs and bakes cookies and offers them to me. He pays rent. He works full time and volunteers at the Goodwill on Sundays. He exercises. He’s started his own blog. He’s going to meetings and has sober friends.

I still have thoughts like, “I hope he goes back and finishes his degree,” and “I hope he meets a nice girl and gets married and has kids.” I notice these thoughts. I name them as expectations. I am kind to myself. I acknowledge that they could happen but that there are no guarantees and that Vince’s designs for his future may not match mine. Just for today, I’ll be grateful for what’s right. I will not go romping into the poppy field of expectations and disappointments.

Jailbird Rock

1 Reply

Wow!  I got another enthusiastic email from JPay, whose slogan is, “Making it Easier.”  I feel my blood pressure rise as I read that.  Nothing—nothing—makes having a loved in in prison easier.  And to the contrary, being ripped off in order to communicate with them adds financial strain on top of the shame, worry, anger, disappointment, and all the other negative emotions.

I will just repeat here what I wrote early on in this blog.  When people said, “At least you know where he is, and that he’s got a roof over his head and three meals so you don’t have to worry about him,” my response was, “That’s true.  There have been months and years when I didn’t know where Vince was and I worried myself sick imagining he was dead in a cornfield.

It was always that cornfield.  Maybe, as a city person, it was my worst-case scenario.  If I were going to be found dead, I would hope it was in my own home, fully dressed with my makeup on, after I had taken the empty wine bottles out to the recycling bins.  I shudder at the image of being found dead in a cornfield, where in my imagination it is always winter and crows are circling overhead.  Ugh.

All you have to do is watch the Prison Rape Elimination Act video to know that there is still plenty to worry about if your kid is in prison.

Back to JPay.  Here’s what they say about video visits:

There’s nothing quite like seeing your loved one in person. Visiting them at their correctional facility, however, can often be difficult; the prison or jail may be far away, and the security procedures can be invasive. Sometimes there’s just no way to be there in person.

“When physical visits are impossible or inconvenient, JPay’s Video Visitation lets you talk face-to face with your incarcerated friend or relative from the comfort of your own home. When you can’t be there, this is the next best thing.”

Wow, it almost brings a tear to my eye, how compassionate they are and how they want to help!  It’s almost like they know I was ejected from Moose Lake and banned from visiting my son for six months.

So, even though Vince is no longer incarcerated, I’ll share with you all the marvelous ways that JPay helps families stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones.

You could send them money so they can buy ramen and instant coffee—that’s only $9.95 per $100.  You could buy one short email for $2.00.  Or how about a first-class stamp?  JPay charges 40 cents to buy a 49-cent stamp.  That’s not a 9-cent discount, that’s 89 cents total for one stamp.

Finally, you could pay $9.95 for a 30-minute video visit.

This is new information to me; when I visited Vince the last time before he was released they were just rolling out this option and the rumor was that it would cost $99—not $9.95.  So, my apologies to JPay—$9.95 is actually a bargain compared to taking the day off work and driving for four hours to make a physical visit.

But on this day, JPay was emailing me to say I could fund a media account with no fees for this one day.  I could not figure out what a media account was; maybe it’s not available at the facility from which Vince was released.  Again, they show hip, attractive, young people having a great time … listening to tunes, I guess.

And at the very bottom are Apple AppStore and Google Play buttons—are these corporate giants getting in on the easy cash to made off of prison families?

Mothers and Sons and Sibs

Leave a reply

Once a month or so since I started this blog, I’ve posted a roundup of all the prison-related news.   Lately there has been a lull in the media, but not in my personal life.

I met a grade-school friend for dinner.  Even though I have a constant desire to live somewhere else or to at least travel constantly, as I get older I’ve found I appreciate the old friendships more.  We went to the same school, lived in the same neighborhood, spent a lot of time at each other’s houses.

And our sons have much in common.  Over dinner, she told me the long story of his unraveling. To protect her privacy I won’t go into detail, but he is looking at some serious prison time—maybe 10 years.  His circumstances didn’t come about over night; she’s been trying to balance support and detachment for 20 years.  All I could do was empathize about how powerless and bereft she felt.  She didn’t seem to feel the shame that was predominant for me when Vince was first imprisoned.  I think she was too exhausted.

—

Another friend, whose son is a Lutheran version of Vince, called to say she had phoned the police to report her son acting threateningly.  It took the police an hour to show up.  They took him down to the station and she didn’t know what would happen and she asked if she could sleep on my couch in case they let him go, because she was afraid.  I said of course.  The police did let him go and there was more drama but in the end they both slept under her roof and no one was hurt.

—

Two professional colleagues have brothers who were recently jailed for Driving Under the Influence, neither one for the first time.

One asked me if I thought she should bail her brother out.  In Alanon I learned not to give advice but to talk about my own experience and offer support.

“If you pay his bail,” I said, “expect to lose that money.  And since he’s looking at 10 years inside, don’t be surprised if he goes on a major bender.”

“But he’s going to live in the family cabin in the middle of the woods, and he won’t have a car,” she said.

“Is there a riding lawn mower or an ATV there?” I asked, and we laughed because there is a riding mower at the cabin and she knows he would ride it into town to the liquor store.

—

A member of my own family spent time in jail recently.  He managed to find an old grade school friend to bail him out.

Note to my grade school friend: If I ever wind up in jail I hope I can count on you to bail me out.

My relative is out now.  He was ordered to undergo mental health and chemical dependency assessments as a condition of his release.  This is a good thing but since he is homeless and unemployed and doesn’t have a vehicle, it’s hard to imagine how he will make it happen, even if he was enthusiastic about it, which he isn’t.  He calls his mother and hangs up, or leaves messages which start out sweet then turn sarcastic when she doesn’t pick up the phone.  She is doing a wonderful job of not reacting to him.  But then, she’s had 30 years of practice.

It’s never, ever just the person sitting in jail who is affected, it’s the whole family.  All the old narratives, grudges, and codependency kicks into overdrive.  Mothers feel guilty.  Fathers hide in their workshops.  Step parents are often the most sensible ones because their identities aren’t hanging on the offender’s actions.  Siblings are either overly involved, ordering everyone around like they have an invisible clipboard, or distance themselves even further from the family.

So what’s going on?  Is it the full moon, the holidays, the dark cold season?  Or because, like most people, I associate with people like myself?

Alone in the City of Dreaming Spires

Leave a reply

I spent Thanksgiving in Wisconsin with my cousins, which is what I do every year. Vince couldn’t come because he is not allowed to leave Minnesota.

After eating way too much food, I made the mistake of checking Facebook right before I turned out the light. There were a couple posts from Vince. He sounded so lonely.

I couldn’t fall asleep. I laid there thinking about the time I learned to be alone. I think this is one of the most important skills we have to master in life.

—

I had moved to Oxford, England four months before my birthday. I rented a house with a three-legged cat named McCartney and housemate who went home to Scotland every weekend. I had a great job. I had joined a posh gym. I had made some acquaintances through work and Alanon meetings.

Red Door

This was before Skype or Facebook or What’sApp. My family and friends used email to communicate with me, but there was no internet at the house.

I don’t normally even care about my birthday. I hadn’t told my housemate or acquaintances it was my birthday because I didn’t want to seem like I was fishing for a fuss.

I walked into town to see a movie. February in England is dreary and drizzly. Well, most months are. In comparison to November, the sun was setting later (almost 5pm!) but the sky really only went from murky black to dark grey and back to murk again.

I got some popcorn and found a seat. Someone behind me said, “Pssst!” Hurrah! It was a friendly woman from my Alanon meeting named Rebecca. I wouldn’t spend my birthday alone after all! But she just said, “Nice to see you,” and that was that. I thought, unreasonably, “Why couldn’t she have invited me to sit with her and her friend?” I felt really put out.

The movie was Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. There’s a scene where Johnny is drying out and his family confronts a drug dealer with shot guns. The theater exploded in laughter. “Typical Americans!” I could hear around me.

I had picked a bad time to move to England. George W. Bush was using their air bases to transport terrorists and political prisoners in black helicopters, and most Brits were not happy about it. Most people were nice enough—if reserved—but I had been confronted by several very angry people who took me to task for everything my country had ever done wrong.

It really hit me that I was not only lonely but alone. I was on an island with 64 million people and I didn’t know a single one of them beyond asking the time of day. It was piercing.

I went home and had a few beers while I stared out the front window like some tragic heroine in a period movie. People strode past with their hands deep in their pockets and their heads down. I wallowed in self-pity. But somehow I knew I would get through it, that I wasn’t going to die of loneliness, that everything would change eventually—if not the next day then next week or next month. Everything did change. I’ve had a lot of great adventures on my own and with other people.

Now we can feel like we’re never alone by floating along on endless social media streams of cutsie platitudes and cat videos and political rants and “breaking news.”

—

Did Vince know that nothing stays the same forever? I finally fell into a worried, fragmented sleep. I dreamed that Vince fell into a river and was swept away into a big pipe. I ran along the river bank until I came to an opening in the top of the pipe. I could see his face underwater, looking up at me. The iron bars over the opening were wide enough for my hand to slip through so I could touch him, but too narrow for me to pull him through. Ugh. I woke up crying. I don’t need a psychiatrist to analyze that dream.