Seesaw

Into the Wilderness: Story 9

“Good job, mom.” When a child graduates high school with honors, gets into a good college, becomes a high-earning professional, or achieves a special award, I will, like many, credit the mom. I know the nights of walking the floor with a screaming infant or staying up late to support a teen finishing a book report. Scrambling to get dinner for the family. Taxiing to after-school lessons.

But what about the reverse? If good kids have good moms, what does that mean for mothers of troubled teens? The mothers of kids who have mental health issues or who make dangerous and challenging decisions? The mothers of addicts and criminals? Bad job, mom?

I have never met a bad mother- or father, for that matter- with a child in wilderness or residential treatment. Every mother I have met through these extraordinary programs is extraordinary herself- highly invested, caring, committed. They have had to learn the hardest and saddest lesson of all: good mothering doesn’t always have its rewards. Your child can fall.

I’m sure, like me, you’ve repeated the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.

Parents with kids in wilderness learn quickly: you don’t control much. Sure, we support our kids, provide shelter, bathe and feed them, and that’s because we are the privileged ones (I am constantly reminded that many families, unfairly and not because of lack of effort, struggle to provide these basics. I could say more, but this is not a political post). Maybe we have always tried to be our best selves and more times than not said all the right things at all the right times, controlled our tempers, listened with compassion. Even then, our window of influence passes quickly before the hormones and undeveloped frontal lobe take over.

At that point, we are cast to the wind, tumbled along with millions of other influences completely out of our control. Think of the hours in a day that we can actually influence our teens (well, before the Coronavirus lock down, which has provided my own family, at least, with plenty of time): a few moments at breakfast while they slurp at the cereal bowl, 30 minutes at dinner talking through mouthfuls of lasagna, and, if really fortunate, a snatch of time before bed when they relax and we unexpectedly catch it.

But think of all the other influences. Every student encountered in the hallway and in classrooms at school. The friends they conspire and joke with in and out of school or at lessons afterward. Every What’s App message. Every Snapchat and Instagram post. The vast, faceless grasp of all the social networks, new ones emerging so quickly, it’s hard to download them on the phone fast enough.

One evening, early in 9th grade, Catina went to a birthday slumber party. I had always preferred to have friends stay at our house, but this was a celebration. After talking to the mom, I drove Catina down our mountain to a neat shingled house in town. I dropped her off, waving as I drove away.

That night, Catina and her friend snuck out, the tempting pull of an unsupervised party.

Here’s how it plays out in my mind. Catina and her friend arrive at the lit up house, music blasting through the open door. They work their way through the crowded room toward the cluttered kitchen counter. The counter has a big bowl with the kind of punch that turns tongues bright red and next to it random bottles of alcohol. Someone hands her a plastic cup, and she laughs and drinks it down, extending her arm for a refill. Then, another one and another one.

And that’s when I cannot imagine anymore. But I know what happened. I know she drank too much. I know she passed out on a bed upstairs. I know it was there that a boy- a high school boy who saw a semi-unconscious girl as a yes- did the most awful. I know that night my daughter became one of the many young women who could say #MeToo.

The next day, she came home late in the afternoon, pushing past me at the front door and heading directly up the stairs. I called after her, asking how it was. She was tired. They had stayed up all night. Though I didn’t connect it then, Catina changed after this. She became surly and dark. She stayed in her room, sleeping hours and hours. She was angry, always.

I think about this turning point a lot. Catina blamed herself and hid it from us. She shouldn’t have snuck out. She shouldn’t have been drinking. Somehow, she must have signaled it was ok. Here’s the sad part: that’s what women do. We take harassment and abuse and say: what did I do wrong? We carry it inside us like black balls of goo.

I recently read about the blackest material on earth. It is called Vantablack, but scientists have now found a way to grow an even blacker material that absorbs over 99.9% of all light which hits it. That level of blackness is what I think about when women carry these horrible secrets inside them. It’s that blackness that consumes me when I think of a society that makes women feel responsible for violence inflicted upon them.

We didn’t know until wilderness. When I learned, I collapsed to my knees. I wept. I kept tracing back to dropping her off, to the casual wave, almost flippant, as I pulled away. This movie played in my mind, and I tried to push rewind over and over again, but the button was stuck.

It’s events like these that show how little we control. The crush of life is on one side of a seesaw and on the other end the parent trying damn hard to hold it down. It’s an imbalance that makes the seesaw pitch into the air, throwing our lighter weight to the wind.

And there I was, hurled into the air, flipping endlessly in the atmosphere. I tumbled about, gigantic somersaults of doubt. I see myself spinning head over heal, an Olympic-worthy vault with no reward. I would eventually land. I would land with both feet firmly planted, a stretch to signal the finish. But I landed knowing, sadly, the weight is not in our favor. So strap your feet down. Load your hands with ball bearings and your ankles with lead. That seesaw is out of your control.