Today, I met him at a swank hotel in town. After I dropped my son off at his new school, I hurried home and showered. I changed into a new dress I bought for the occasion, a simple black sheath. For the first time in years, I had bought underwear that wasn’t designed solely for comfort-a lacy push-up bra and matching bikini panties. And guess what? I’ve still got it. I am not just the beleaguered mother of a troubled child. I had my hair done a week ago, punching up the gold highlights that had turned mousy and flat, opting for a shoulder-length straight bob. And when I look in the mirror, I see her. The girl I used to be-bright and happy and full of hope. I am not her. But I remember her.
The valet took my car, and I stood on the steps of the hotel and looked out into the harbor. I could hear the halyards clanging on the boats and smell the salt in the air. Florida. We have moved to Florida, a new school, a new life. I think, I dare to hope, that we have done the right thing.
I stood in the doorway of the grand dining room. The high mirrored ceilings and enormous chandeliers reflected the light streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. And the tinkling of silverware and the hum of conversation were a kind of music that carried me away. I drifted over to the table where he waited for me. He rose and took me into his arms. We didn’t linger long over lunch.
And the good news, the best news of all, is that this man who’s setting me on fire-well, we’re already married. Yes, that’s right, diary. I am having a red-hot, sizzling, secret fling with my own husband.
After my mother’s accident, she decided that it was time for her to go back to Florida. Who could blame her?
And, maybe in a way, it was a blessing. I couldn’t lean on her anymore. I had to call my husband that night and ask him to come home for good. I told him that I needed him and that I couldn’t manage alone, and that he was right. I’d made so many mistakes relating to our child, and I needed him to help me rebuild our family.
And, you know what? He did it. He made changes in his job-less travel, more time working from home. We sat down with our son and we told him that things were going to change. That he had one opportunity to change his behavior in this new place, in a new school, or we would have no choice but to send him to the place my mother had suggested.
There was a school in Florida, not very near my mother and sister, about two hours south. We decided to move there, enroll him in their new program for troubled children, and build a new life, start over. We would be closer to my family, but not so close as to burden them with our problems.
It’s an understatement to say that our son wasn’t happy. But I think that he saw us, for the first time, as a united front and he realized that he had very little choice. No more divide and conquer.
The move was not easy; none of us really relished the idea of living down south. But the school was highly regarded, and they’d been having success with cases like ours. Through education, medication, and therapy, children like our son were being managed and helped. There were even therapy and education session for us. My husband and I saw it as a last chance to have a seminormal life with our child.
He would board four nights a week at the school and return home to us Friday through Sunday night. This served to remove him from any dysfunctional relationships that might be contributing to his illness (whatever that was-we’ve had as many diagnoses as there are out there, from bipolar, to ADHD, to schizophrenia, to borderline personality, to malignant narcissism). This was the hardest part, because he and I had never been apart.
I don’t have to tell you how all of this went. The rages, the tears. He locked himself in a bathroom for eight hours. He tore the curtains off the wall in his room. He tried to set the clothes in his closet on fire. But the difference was, this time, I didn’t seek to comfort and coddle. I didn’t give in to his demands. I held back and let my husband handle our son. And, guess what? He did a much better job than I ever had.
Our son seemed to calm under my husband’s firm guidance. If our boy was fire, my husband was cold water. With my husband, tantrums and breakdowns didn’t escalate the way they did with me. I would lie on the bed in my room and listen to the high-pitched sound of my son’s voice, the low, easy rumble of my husband’s, and then silence or even-imagine-laughter.
The night before he left for school was the hardest. I lay beside my son on his bed while he begged me not to send him away.
“I’ll be good, Mom,” he said. “Don’t send me to that place.”
And everything inside me hurt, but I held my ground.
“It will be fine,” I said. Even though I wasn’t sure I believed this. “And it’s not forever. We’ll all learn how to do better together. And then you’ll come home. Anyway, it’s just four nights away.”
He sobbed. And after he finally fell asleep, so did I. In the morning, my husband took him. My son didn’t even look at me. He wouldn’t even say good-bye. I told myself that this was the first step toward normal.
And something happened while he was away that week. I expanded. I stretched out and became myself again. I didn’t spend my whole day dreading the call from his school, or bracing myself for breakdowns over homework or what was for dinner. I didn’t worry about his nightmares, or his visions, or his lies, or who he might hurt. For the first time he was in a place where they were actually equipped to handle all of it. And toward the middle of the week, over pizza and a bottle of wine, I fell in love with my husband again.
We’re hiding it from our son, this love affair we’re having, this newfound happiness. The weekends are still hard, and Sunday the worst of all. He hates the new school, of course, but we’re already seeing changes. And we’re learning that it is okay for him to be unhappy and to deal with it. He’ll need to change his behavior to be happier, and that’s something we haven’t taught him. Because when he’s been unhappy, I’ve tried to change the world to make him happier. I never asked him to be accountable for his own happiness. And for someone like my son, who has emotional challenges, this failure on my part has had some terrible consequences. Another child might have just been whiny, or spoiled or entitled. Our boy is filled with rage when things don’t go his way.
We feel that it would set him back if he knew how really happy we were while he was away at school. I know; that’s another bad mother badge for me. But you don’t understand; you can’t. Normal children demand all of you, night and day. They want and deserve to have you all to themselves, some of the time at least. But troubled children want all of you and then more and more. They want things inside of you that you didn’t even know were there. They mine the depths of you, pillage every resource and then still it’s not enough. I have been filling myself up again-spending time with my husband, working out, reading, seeing films. I’ve applied for a job at the local bookstore café, just something to reconnect me to the world, to my love of literature. When our boy comes home on the weekends, I’m a better mother, a better person. I am fresh to the fight on Friday afternoon.
Since the first time I’ve started visiting with you, diary, I feel strong. I am in love again. I am hopeful for my son and for our family. I am almost afraid to say it. But I really believe, in my deepest heart, that everything is going to be all right.
21
Once I pushed a little boy off the jungle gym at school. I won’t forget the look on his face as he fell. The wide surprise in his eyes, the O of his mouth as he felt himself tilt off the metal surface and gravity took him down hard. He landed on his arm funny and it broke, twisted at an unnatural angle beneath him. There was a snap, an ugly sound that caused me to cringe inside. And then a loud wail of pain and fear. A swarm of adults flew from their playground posts. I stood above him, looking down. Much was made of my “flat affect” in that moment, my total lack of remorse.