Thank God He's in Jail

A mother's Christmas prayer answered

Of course, I wasn’t praying he’d go to jail. I was praying that he’d be safe, be warm, be fed, be out of the rain, that the new storms and rising creek beds wouldn’t wash away his tent with all his belongings, his tools of survival, like it did last year around this time.

But jail has always been a beacon of hope for the mothers and lovers of addicts who seem lost to us. Jail is a second chance to dry out, clean up, start over.  To recover, to heal, to make better choices, the choices that mothers and lovers would choose for them.

I wrote a blog post with a similar title nineteen years ago on “Walking on the Wild Side—For Those Who Love Addicts” . I created this anonymous blog when I was at my wits end on how to help him, this son I loved so much, to give voice to the kinds of crazy things I did and experienced when I gave my everything to try to save him from himself, things I was ashamed to share with anyone, on that wild roller-coaster ride I took with him in those desperate days:

• Answering a midnight call and sneaking out of bed with my sleeping husband beside me to drive hundreds of miles to skid row in the middle of LA  to find him and bring him home.

• Pulling him back into the car when he tried to jump out on the freeway because I’d refused to take him where he wanted to go.

• Abandoning my car by the side of the road when we were fighting, and he refused to get out when I ordered him to.

• Driving all over town to find his addict girlfriend because he refused to go to an expensive rehab I’d paid for without her.

• Moving into a motel room with him near a methadone clinic in the desperate hope he’d enter the program so he could get treatment.

He claims I saved his life many times over, doing all that. And maybe I did. He’d already had too many overdoses to count by then. At the very least (or most) my efforts (and his) led to the years of sobriety and “normal” living in which he fathered my two beloved grandchildren.

Sadly, it didn’t last.

Happily, by the time it all came crashing down again, I’d finally learned how to let go. To step off that roller-coaster and allow him to pursue that journey on the wild side that he prefers, on his own.

So why am I thankful he’s in jail now?

• Because I know where he is, that he’s safe and warm and fed.

• Because he calls me every day now when I hadn’t heard from him in nearly a year.

• Because he’s reconnected with his two children, who love him and do not judge him despite all this.

• Because the jail system has changed since his last stay, giving him Suboxone for his withdrawals rather than making him suffer through them cold turkey.

• Because he says he’ll stay on the Suboxone when he gets out or switch to methadone, which he likes better. He had already managed his addiction by making the safer choice to smoke his heroine rather than injecting it to protect himself from a fentanyl overdose.

So yes, jail has been good for both of us.

When he gets out in two weeks I’ll bring him home to stay for a few days where he’ll be able to visit with his kids before he returns to the life he’s made for himself and prefers, out there in the wild, in that risk-taking, thrill-seeking, adrenaline-pumping, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants life among the nomadic community of canvas-dwellers where he feels at home.

Where he thrives because he’s clever and resourceful. Because he has a good heart and shares the bounty he gathers in his hunts with those less fortunate. Because he has a reputation as one of the good guys you don’t mess with. Because he has a lover waiting there for him. Because he knows his kids are safe in loving homes, parented by people who are providing them with the kind of life he always wanted for them but was unable to maintain.

A hunter-gatherer—that’s what he’s always been:

• Even as a toddler when he escaped the backyard to go wandering the streets on walk-about adventures.

• Even as the schoolboy forever falling out of his desk chair, unable to sit still until we put him on Ritalin.

• Even as the boy obsessed with deep sea fishing and spear hunting beneath the sea when we were sailing around the world.

• Even as the young man who jumped ship in Australia at the tender age of 16 to apprentice with a boat-builder, rather than continuing the sailing journey with his parents---this stubborn, keenly independent, anti-authoritarian, rule-breaking, adventure-loving, wild-child that he always was and still is.

And me? I take one day at a time now, changing the things I can change and accepting the things I can’t. And knowing the difference now, I can rest and feel blessed by small prayers answered.

May you and all your loved ones be safe and warm and well fed, out of the rain and storms, this Christmas and throughout the New Year.