Say what?

Since he was five hours old, I've loved him. I fed him, burped him, changed him, held his hand when he toddled his first steps. When he was two, I helped him sort shapes into letters and numbers. When he was four, my father taught him about fishing while my friend taught him about climbing trees and t-ball. When he was five years of age, he'd smile and hug me when I told him I loved him. And we taught him how to ride a bike.

When he was seven, his life changed and his tricks and tests began. I responded by loving him more, hugging him more, but he didn't trust that, or wasn't interested in that, and he developed an incredible skill for lies over the next couple years. And those lies forged a path he still travels, still suffers. What I did at the time was respond by telling him that it would always be okay for him to tell me the truth. I said over and over again that I might not like what he had to say but that I would always respect his right to be himself. I told him that I wanted his honesty and would always be open to his words as long as they were true. I said it so early in his life because I wanted him to trust it, to recognize the safety as much as he recognized me. Later in his years I explained to him that without his truth, I would never know him, and later still in his life, I explained that without his truth I would never be able to help him.

Through the years, I based my trust in him on his response to that open door. For the most part he understood me and would confess pulled hair or homework undone. When his behavior was more, well, ill-behaved, when his life's challenges became more than ultimately harmless poor decisions, he'd shut down. He would not respond with anything beyond what he thought I wanted to hear. Meaning, a thick line of his big lies began to separate us.

For years the separation.

He tested me, to be sure. But that's how it is when you love a child, when a child launches your heart, when everything good about you and everything right and wonderful that you know keeps you up at night because how the hell can you possibly be worthy of raising this young life and how can you possibly give him the magic that was given you? That's what you ask yourself when you say the Lord's Prayer, holding his little hand and wondering if it's wrong that the two of you giggle because you are running back and forth between his and his sister's room and they laugh at your pace. And all you want to do is scoop them both up in your arms forever, for these are the shining moments of your life but you know that you want them to be the saving moments of theirs. I remember those days, my crossing that risky bridge between what I knew about their little lives and what I hoped for their enormous futures.

Never did I think he'd test the belief I'd expressed to him his entire life, that I'd doubt my ability to accept his truths, that he'd throw me upside down by his confessions, his tears, by the whole of his present expressed, or the courage it took for him to risk our relationship by speaking his truth out loud during lunch on an otherwise meaningless Sunday afternoon. Never did I think that my gift would be returned with such weight and need. I could not have imagined the trouble he would be in, the behavior he would embrace, the tears of his confession, or the moment which he chose to reveal his life to me, his concerns for that life, and his fears that tomorrow or the next day he might not have a life.

How he got here, I don't know. What I can do to help him? I don't know that either. But I know I have to and I know I will.

I've never really known fear before today. I've walked through a dark alley at midnight. I've stood frozen and hidden (at six years of age) behind the curtains while my house was being robbed. I've seen a pistol held to my father's head, a knife held to my niece's throad, and I've stared at the worst of myself in the mirror and had the worst of me tell her to just Fuck off. I've held my father's lifeless hand, and I am right now watching the sparkle of life leave my mother's eyes, but nothing, nothing I experience or can drum up in my mind can measure up to the terror I felt when I heard his words today, to the chill in my spine on hearing them.

When you ask for the truth, it might be years and years before you hear it, but you need to brace yourself for the day that you do. When you finally do hear it, all the fears that you've imagined the worst to be, they are kitten paws. They are Barbie dolls writing love letters in the sand compared to what you hear.

When you hear the truth, when it spills from his mouth onto the table and the floor and the room and your ears, put your mind not on how he got here but how in the world you can get him safe again.

And then crawl in bed, pull the pillow over your head and think about when he weighed all of ten pounds and you held him and burped him, about when he was too young for words or lies. Think about when saving him meant holding his hand during the Lord's prayer and reminding him the words. Think about that night you took him for a walk and he exploded your heart with joy when he decided to re-name all the stars in the sky.