June '04


HOBART #3

ANDREW BOMBACK 20 Stories About My Dead Brother, Ollie
DENNIS DILLINGHAM Two Octogenarians Sitting at a Starbucks Drinking Orange Juice
PIA EHRHARDT Hail
ELIZABETH ELLEN The Girl at the End of the Bar
LEE KLEIN Brave Men Run
JOHN LEARY Daddy
PASHA MALLA Three Penises of Adelaide, South Australia
SHAUNA MCKENNA Chance
MAX RUBACK Introduction to Still-Life
DAMON STEWART Lost in the Static
SUSAN TOWNSEND Family Therapy

Photo by Hobart, taken from current road trip.

On Friday, I allowed a group of strangers to admit my fifteen-year-old son, Ben, to a juvenile psychiatric facility. "It's for his own protection and the well-being of those around him," the doctor told me, making it sound like Ben had leprosy. By the time Monday morning arrived, along with the appointment for our first session, I was still trying to dig myself out from an avalanche of guilt. This kind of thing didn't happen to good mothers. Sons with competent, caring mothers don't take a paring knife and carve up their arms like so much stringy pot roast.

Like a murder trial, my mind dredged up every scrap of evidence - irrefutable proof that I had failed my only child. I remembered when he was three and I slapped his face because he spat at me. And when he was twelve, he said that he hated me. Instead of counting to ten or walking away, I told him I hated him, too.

My defense attorney didn't have a chance. It didn't matter how many times I'd read "The Cat in the Hat" at two in the morning. It didn't matter how many Band-Aids I doled out, for injuries real and imagined, or how many monsters I banished from his closet.

I had tried so hard to check everything off the list that went on forever - the list of things good mothers do. Talking to him even before he even knew what I was saying, listening for hours, pretending to listen when I couldn't anymore, and loving him every moment. Not liking him very much sometimes, but always loving him. I loved him even when I didn't love myself, but something went wrong. Something slipped by.

I dressed for the appointment with care and a critical eye. Maybe if the packaging looked good, no one would notice the disheveled contents. I appraised my reflection in the bedroom mirror and promised myself I wouldn't babble the way I always did when I was nervous. I'd listen, I'd find out what Ben needed, and I'd do whatever it took. My husband Peter called to me from the kitchen. "We'd better get going."

I glanced at the clock and noticed with some shock that we might actually arrive on time. Punctuality was not one of Peter's strong suits. He must be nervous, too, I decided, but the truth was, I didn't know what demons he battled. I had been too busy sinking into my own quicksand of self-recrimination to ask him how felt. When was the last time Peter and I really talked?

Then, in an unexpected moment of clarity, my self-pity gave way to the realization that, as Ben had grown older, my conversations with him had changed, too, both in frequency and duration. What had I missed as we each took on our subconscious vow of silence?