The Story Of A Mother With A Child At Risk

I used to say to my husband: It's like
he grew up in El Barrio. You don't
believe me. You don't understand.
I don't think he absorbed anything of
the "culture" in our house. Not Modeh
ani. Not negel vasser. Not anything.
And my husband would say: You're
exaggerating.
But I wasn't. Like he grew up in El
Barrio.
At the beginning it was spitting in the
street. Throwing a soda can out of the
car window as we were driving home
from the country. Then the swagger
started. The Southern hillbilly drawl. A
new vocabulary. Hey, Rabbi. (Rabbi?
- what happened to Rebbe?) My friend
in Israel (not Bretz Yisroel?). Upstate (i.e.
the Mountains). And this was the
vocabulary when he was on the way up,
way, way up.
Last year his vocabulary didn't
include "rabbis" - it was more of
unprintable vulgarities. And his cloth-
ing didn't include a yarmulke. No - this
was definitely on the way up.
And if he's up all night now "on the
weekends;' I am grateful that it's no
longer every night. And if he sleeps on
Shabbos and Sunday until four in the
afternoon, I bite my tongue, because
after all, as he says: A: It's easier not to
be mechallel Shabbos if you sleep
through most of it. B: He's been getting
up the past few weeks on Monday
through Friday to go to work. So how
can I complain?
Nowadays I'm sleeping through
the night - mostly. Last year, and two
years ago, (and three and four also) I
didn't sleep as well. Often I would
wake up in the middle of the night -
find my face wet from tears - my lips
moving even as I s1ept. "Please,
Hashem - help us. Help him. Protect
him from himself."
I remember the dreams. One that
recurred fairly frequently (Dare I write
it? Dare I say it?) was his levaya. And I
was crying so hard - because I could not
get anyone to be maspid him. No one.
No one had anything nice to say about
him. And the tragedy of what was happening, the terror of what might yet
happen, gave me no peace.
We spoke to gedolim. We spoke to
professionals. The gedolim said, no mat-
ter what - don't lock the door. Only
with love. And some professionals said:
You have leverage; you have to learn how
to use it. Make limits. Don't let him step
all over you. If he violates curfew, lock
him out.
One therapist who had worked with
him while he was in yeshiva said: The
key is the morning. You have to get him
out of bed in the morning even if you
have to get physical. And another said:
He's a gem. He'll outgrow it. And my
friend said: You just have to keep his
head above water. Just don't let him
sink.
Don't let? Tell me how! Leverage?
It's just not working. He gets angrier and
angrier. And we grow even more distant.
But what difference does it make
what anyone said? We tried it all and
nothing worked.
Nothing at all.
H e went from an immature kid
(no contradiction to his bril-
liance) to a yeshiva throw-out
to another yeshiva throw-out. To the
street. All day- and most nights- when
he wasn't sleeping the sleep of the
drugged.
The pool hall. The pool hall was his
home. And after a while I became grateful for that too - because if he wouldn't
be in the pool hall -where would he be?
At night - waiting for the call - the
call from the police - or the hospital -
or ....
It defies description, the horror of
those nights. I would sit up in the living room - saying the whole Tehillim -
and sobbing out loud. And when he
would open tbe door at 4:00 A.M. - and
come in, bloodshot eyes - staggering
from alcohol - or drugs (yes, drugs!) as
though nothing was wrong- ("Why are
you up, Mom? Is anything wrong?") I
would die a little more inside.
We tried to talk to him - it didn't
help. No one was home. We tried group
therapy- he stormed out. We tried private therapy. He refused to go. "Oppositional, defiant" - those were the words
the professionals used. And I just wanted to know-how does that differ from
middos ra'os? Baal yeitzer hara? Rasha?
Baal taava?

Help me! Won't someone help me?
Doesn't anyone care to help me?
Having a son like this is a humbling
experience. Truly humbling. I never
thought of myself as an arrogant per-
son - but I must admit, I used to think
that I knew the "reason" for kids like
mine. Either it's a dysfunctional home.
No shalom bayis. No warmth. Too rigid
or too loose. No money, or too much
money. No real simchas hachayim. Too
liberal - modern. Too frum - fanatic.
Or maybe, sometimes, it's not the home
- I thought, and the kid must be learn-
ing disabled and couldn't make it in
yeshiva.
And then all of a sudden the kid was
mine, not LD. Somehow, in my fami-
ly, my beautiful blessed family, it had
happened. He slipped through our fin-
gers - and joined the other side - the
world that we thought we had locked
out when we locked out TV and movies,
and yes, even the daily newspapers.
M y husband still tells him gen-
tly that he wants him to be a
tzaddik and a true talmid
chacham. So now we argue, my husband
and I, late at night when no one else is
around. I want him to change what he
hopes for our son, what he tells him.
just tell him that you hope he will be an
ehrlicher Yid. Please - that would be the
right thing to say. And my husband
won't budge. No, he says. But I counter
- fighting back tears - an ehrlicher Yid
is not a little thing. It is so much. It is
so great. Can you imagine if he would
wear tzitzis? Put on tefillin every day?
Daven three times a day? To be an
ehrlicher Yid is so much. And my hus-
band just looks at me sadly - doesn't
answer - and continues to tell him how
much he hopes he will be a talmid
chacham and a tzaddik.
Deep inside, I'm not sure he's wrong.
What would it do to my son to see that
we've changed our hopes for him?
Would it make him think - You see?
They've given up on me. On the other
hand, maybe it would relieve the pres-
sure, and he would realize that we will
respect him even if he does choose a dif-
ferent path than the others. Who is right?

I wish I knew.
But you see - that is so much part of
the pain. All the decisions. And never
being sure that you've made the right
one. What to say, how to say it, when
to be firm, when to bend the rules.
Sometimes I don't even know what to
want much less how to achieve it.
I used to think that if only I would
do the right thing - arrange things
smoothly- he'd get better. At one point,
it seemed that everyone else knew how
to do "it" better than I did. ("It" being
making the right moves so that your
child stops his fall and starts to climb
back up.) Now I think that there are
many different ways that could help -
but it really depends on him - on his
bechira and not so much of what I do.
Here are some of my confused
thoughts:
1. Recovery, one drug therapist told
me, is a process, not an event. Your son
is in the process. You have to expect that
there will be slipping - and sliding. But
as long as he's headed in the right direction, there is hope.
A process - not an event. On one
level, I know that that is true. But on
another level - a deep, gut emotional
level, I keep waiting for the "event." A
revelation. Like by Har Sinai. A light-
ning flash of self-awareness. Eliyahu
Hanavi to tap him on the shoulder and
lead him back home.
Can it be I am waiting for - teshuva? That is a beautiful dream. But then
sometimes I shudder to think what true
teshuva might do to him. If he were ever
to realize what he did to us - to all of
us - his parents, siblings, grandparents
- What pain, what excruciating pain he
caused us - what sleepless nights and
depression-filled, non-functioning days.
I'm afraid of what the awareness of that
might do to him. Would it break him?
G-d forbid. I don't want that.
And as much as I once thought that
I could never, ever, ever forgive him for
what he did to us, I have come to learn
that the one with the most pain must
be him. He may not show it. He may
not even realize it. But that is part of
his problem. And it is his pain that I cry
for now.
And so I have learned that - yes - I
will forgive him. I already have. And
now, whether through "revelation-
event" or process, all I want is his complete recovery.
2. Rabbi told me something
that made so much sense. He said: If he
does something bad, don't take it per-
sonally. Make believe he's someone else's
kid. You can be really good and patient
and smart with someone else's kid. But
if someone attacks him-then he's your
kid - and your only kid. (Someone said
to me: You know, your son is a pothead.
My response should be, yes, but he's my
pothead, so watch what you say. And
I'm here to help him no matter what.)
And if he does something good, then for
sure I should let him know how proud
I am of him.
No matter what - he's my kid. My
love for him is unconditional. And I
have to learn to communicate that to
him.
3. There is the issue of embarrass-
ment. How he dresses? Baruch Hashem,
I must say that I'm not embarrassed. I
never was. At least almost never. 1'he
only thing a person should be embar-
rassed of is his own aveiros. I heard
Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon call this
plague a gezeira. If this is a gezeira
(Divine decree), why should I be embarrassed? Anyway, I really believe that his
being an embarrassment would be
counterproductive for him. Because
then he would think that this is about
our needs - not his; our position in society, our egos, our pride.
And it's not. It's about his growing
up. Becoming a mentch. Learning how
to function and be a productive mem-
ber of society. And yes, it is about Yid-
dishkeit, because we truly believe that he
can only be happy (and productive and
a mentch, et al) if he is connected to
Hashem and (dare I say it) a true ben
Torah. To me it seems that he's thrown
away gold and chosen garbage. I was
going to write "straw;' but that would-
n't really be accurate, just a neater sim-
ile. We daven that one day, soon, he will
realize - and choose the gold again.