Mama, I'm Comin' Home
Here I come but I ain't the same.
I have struggled to write this.
I have started and stopped and walked away from my computer, wordless, several times over the past few days. Right now, my thoughts are not flowing out of me as I wish they would—as I know they can.
If I had to diagnose it, I would say that I am spiraling. Even with the gift of words that I possess, I do not know how to explain what is happening in my life—nor can I describe what is taking shape in my heart and my head right now.
I only know that we will never be the same.
Backstory
In December, I learned that I had been betrayed in the worst of ways—for nearly a decade. While I am not ready to discuss these matters openly in a public blog, I share it to illustrate that there are about 25 tabs open in my brain on any given day related to the last ten years of my life: what my gut knew and when, what my heart avoided and why, what I wish I had done and what I will do differently now. This thing alone might have been enough to make me crawl into bed and not ever write again.
And then—
In March, on the morning of my 49th birthday, I got a call from my daughter. She was sitting on the side of the road where Find My iPhone had led her to her boyfriend of three years. He was lying dead in a ditch from a roll-over accident. She had arrived before the police and paramedics, and I would race to get dressed and drive to her, and him, before the medical examiner was on scene. I sat there and watched my baby girl pick grass out of his hair, wanting to fix him, to stay with him—wanting to go with him wherever he had gone.
We buried him on what would have been his 30th birthday, the son-in-law I would not get. For weeks, I would lay down for sleep only to see his lifeless body on the ground. I could only bring my daughter smoothies and comfort food which she could not, would not eat. I would clean her house or take her dogs outside and sit in silence with her on their couch. We moved her out of his house on Mother’s Day.
Somewhere in this blurry timeframe, my oldest son called from prison to tell me that he was finally being paroled—after two years of waiting for this decision to come down. We hurried construction on a new bedroom in our basement and then hosted a parole officer for an in-home inspection. I gathered clothing and bedding, shoes and other necessities. I navigated the phone calls and shifting timelines, began counting the days and battening the hatches for a new voyage.
May dawned, and with it the end of the elementary school year. I continued taking my youngest child to piano and swim class and baseball like nothing else was happening in our lives. I attended field trips and Field Day and a live wax museum and read bedtime stories and made sure to hug him extra while overseeing the teeth brushing and putting Skin Repair on new sunburns and spring bug bites. I hosted a birthday party for him and packed lunches and put the too-small winter clothing away to be donated some time in the next three years.
I also tried to keep my protein intake at lioness levels while following through with all of the treatment protocols from Mayo Clinic— at which I had spent 10 days in early May undergoing a battery of brutal but necessary medical tests for chronic post-viral illness.
Female fertility drops off sharply after age 35, and I now know that there is a damn good reason for that. I collapse into bed every night, thankful but overwhelmed. Satisfied but bewildered. Amazed, but beyond exhausted.
And then—
Two weeks ago, I got another phone call on a random Tuesday morning. This time it was my middle son with his own life news. He is making big changes (which I do not have permission to share). Nevertheless, the Earth shifted again on its axis, and I nearly floated into space. I stood in my kitchen, untethered in the weightlessness and the unknown impact of that moment. Of all of these moments put together.
Being a mother is like nothing else a human can experience—and while I still don’t have the words, I’m gonna try to catch you up on the news we've all been waiting for here at Black Sheep Mom.
One Day At A Time
Before I opened my eyes in that dark hotel room, I thought of him inside of his cell. For years, I have started my mornings this way.
Today—just focus on today.
Of course, I also woke with a pounding in my temples and a tension in my neck that felt like I had been dragging a rope tied around a cinderblock all night. Because I had. I have been holding an entire cinderblock prison cell up in my mind since the start of Covid.
In planning for his release, I didn’t anticipate the headache nor that I would burn my tongue on crappy hotel-lobby coffee and spend the morning feeling that burnt patch against my teeth with regret.
I had always pictured him emerging from the prison gates under the glaring rays of the sun but when I pulled back the hotel curtains, rain spit at me against the glass. It was grey and cold and windy outside. And of course it was—no part of this ride was ever going to be sunshine.
It finally hit me in the shower—they’re gonna have to let him go today.