When All Roads Have Closed

But the later it got, and the darker it got, he didn’t come home. I looked, and walked, and drove the neighborhood, and he was no where. I became so angry while talking to my husband on the phone, walking to familiar places he might have gone, I spiked the phone into the charcoal grey cement, the electricity of my anger sparked live as the corner of the phone exploded and the pieces of the pearl faceplate and battery flew in opposite directions. But it was still working, the voice on the other end was still audible and my anger smoldering white hot in the breezy cold of late November. I am not driven to break things, to throw temper tantrums as my words are release enough to satisfy my hunger. But today there are no words. This is the second time my son has decided to not come home.

The first time we called the police. It is not that I am against the police, I support them. But to call the police for my child who at 10pm had not walked through my front door infuriated me. Where is he, has someone snatched my child, harmed my child. Surely my child is not so bold on his own accord to wholly defy reason and be outside, on the coldest night of the year. The officers were nice, reasonable and like people we would have over the house for a cookout and watch the game.

“He’s probably over a friend’s house.”

But what friend’s mother would not have a child call home and ask….on a school night, if it were ok. Better yet, my child has no friends of this sort. He is kooky and brainy and talkative and smart and he needs to be befriended by making himself overly involved in friendships so much so that his friends get tired of his kind of friendship and no longer want to be friends. I knew my boy was not at anyone’s house. So out they went, the officers and the father, to find my boy, and I was left in the house to feel nothing. I can’t believe this is happening to me. That I am witnessing that which I abhor in my own child.

Since he was three I have been seeking something for this child – and at every avenue we’ve been told he is fine, smart, but fine; that he was too young to be tested for anything, that his fidgety hands, hyper sensitivity skin to rashes, and talkativeness were unrelated and we should take it ‘easy.’

When my husband calls me near midnight to tell me they found him, not at anyone’s house but outside, I couldn’t say anything. I called my mother and listened to her apologies. She was apologizing for our gene pool, for her knowledge of trials I was to face, and for her inability to change my circumstance and her inability to remove my hardship.

A week later I am faced with the exact same circumstance and I can not bring myself to contact anyone. I will not call my mother, will not call the police, I will find him myself no matter how long it takes. He will not have his way. I walked, I drove, I ran, we walked, we drove, we retired. And when others fell asleep I put on more clothes and walked down main streets and up dark side streets; streets with houses darkened by slumber and silent witnesses walking by. I walked by open bars and boarded doorways, but men who looked at me out of concern and those who averted their eyes and by those who couldn’t help but stare. I was out of place. I walked with determination and with faith. I walked in without thinking and out without pleading. I altered between prayer and nothing, but I walked. And when I went back home to get my car keys and wallet and phone, no son greeted me at the door. So I drove slowly as if on the prowl for a nightwalker, peering down the streets and stopped at green lights forcing those behind me to wait as I waited for something to appear. I drove in circles, and figure eights, I drove and parked and drove further. And just as I was fading into sleep at the wheel, when I prayed for the good in all things and drove toward home on a unknown side street, I drove past my bundled son in the middle of the night, walking alone and undetermined.

When I stopped the car and jumped out, I thought I hadn’t pulled the emergency break – taking that extra step to secure the break I feared may have scared my delirious child so I called out to him. “Don’t you move.” Seeing his face as I got out of the car gave me pause and all I could do was open the back door, reach out for him and tell him to get in the car. I didn’t want to hear whatever story he’d convinced himself of as the truth, I was done with wondering what I could have done to get to this point, I just wanted my boy in my car.

This time there were no police, no father, no coaxing or consoling words from him; it was just me. And he reached out and buried his face in my coat and cried out “I don’t want to do anything wrong.” My arms enveloped him despite me and my words told him “son, there is no relationship between us based upon lies – do you understand.” And there we were, in the moonless night, on the sleeping street standing there.