The Last Time written 07/07

The last time I saw my youngest son "John" he had grown very fat. He was wearing an orange jump suit stamped Hennipen County Jail in black washed-out block letters across his chest. In my nervousness, walking down the long row of orange-suited men, I walked right past the cubicle where he sat looking through the glass waiting for me to recognize him. He grinned when I turned around unable to hide my shock at the change in him, yet again.

For some reason I flashed back to the time maybe 15 years earlier when he showed up at my little cabin in Boulder, gaunt as a starved deer, barely able to stand up, weaving and talking crazy. I let him sleep on the couch. He didn’t wake up for over 24 hours. I worried that maybe this would be the time he didn’t. So I sat and watched him breath, remembering all the old times when I cuddled him, bathed him, cared for him as best I could and loved him as much as I was able. After a day of this, he woke up and grunted and barfed. He ate everything he could find in the frig and left. He was 21 then.

Actually I’ve seen very little of him since then. There was the couple of months when he lived with me out on the farm. I gardened with furvor that summer. He planted some marijuana seeds he got somewhere. I have never seen such an attentive farmer. He brought a chair out to the little patch and sat and talked to his plants, sometimes for hours. I kept thinking, if only this energy could be redirected – he’s so smart, so gentle and kind and a basically good man. It is such a waste, this drug stupor. Still then, I thought I could help him if I could just figure out the magic key to unlock him from his addictions.

No magic key appeared. My partner, not having the blindness of motherhood, finally demanded that John get out – too much smoke, too much basic disregard for others in the house. He was disrespectful and treated me badly when under the influence – hadn’t I noticed? John left after the two of them almost came to blows. He didn’t come to our wedding later that summer. He didn’t call again for a year or more. By that time he was in trouble again. He said someone was out to kill him and he was headed for California. I sent money. A couple of months later he called from Las Vegas. Still alive, headed back to Minnesota where he knows how to survive – “at least so far”, he said.

When I dare, I look at his childhood picture on my wall. A beautiful 2 year old with chubby tan legs in the summer sand. Memories of that soft perfect body, running my hand through his fine blond curls. Then comes the memory of the orange jump suit, the home-job tatoos that cover every visible inch of skin and how we talked through the glass over a phone set for only 20 minutes before they took him back to his cell (no matter that I had driven 900 miles). He tried to ease my worries, as he always does, with talk of plans to go straight when he got out. I heard from him about 6 weeks ago - excited that he was out of jail - with plans to bring his girlfriend for a visit to meet me in Arkansas. I said it would be wonderful. No word yet.