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My
 
daughters
 
have
 
taken
 
me
 
out
 
to
 
the
a
rmenian
 
diner
for breakfast.Scrambled eggs, wheat toast, a white carnation from the waitress. “Happy mother’s day!” My daughters re-mind me we had gone here last year, received a very similar looking white carnation.Together we peer at a text message from their brother, John. I am trying to tell them why I am worried thatJohn asked me to go for a hike today. He’s at school in Western Mass, it will be a three-hour drive for me,he’s coming home for the summer in less than a week. “I think he’s sad,” I tell the girls. “I think he wants totalk to me.”
Down a path
 
we don’t know where.
A mother’s journey with her son, Mother’s day 2010.by Lisa Hickey
 
Allie and Shannon look at his text message, a short, “maybe we could go for a hike today or something”. They
agree I should go. They want to spend some time with me rst so we bicycle down to the park, play a few
games. They scatter, I get in my car and head west.
I am lled with dread.
* * *Twenty-three years ago, Johnny was born not breathing and with no heartbeat. I still am haunted by the thoughtthat “he was dead before he was alive.” That moment remains vivid, the frantic rolling of the hospital bed into
the surgery room when the heart monitor atlined. But by the time John’s heart had stopped, he was too far
down the birth canal to do a c-section. He weighed 12 pounds. They hadn’t given me anesthesia.I had given one last push, with everything I had. My husband leaned over to me and said, “I know you’re notthe praying sort, but you might want to start now.” I hear the doctor say grimly, “Apgar score, zero.” I knowthat can’t be good.Suddenly a wail pierces the room. The relief is tangible. Johnny turns bright red, does not stop screaming. Aftera bit, I say, “I think he’s hungry.” Laughter.Johnny has arrived.***The hike starts out foreboding. We park by a deserted paper mill, the bridge Johnthinks leads to the trailhead is closed. We soon see why, as we walk across we can
see a roiling river below through holes in the concrete. Two boys in camouage
run ahead of us, bb guns on their shoulders. The wind picks up, I hear the sound of thunder. There’s always thunder in my nightmares.We walk down the road, hit a dead-end with a multitude of no trespassing signs. We duck into the woods wherewe think the mountain is. Follow some train tracks. I’m reminded of how when John was 4 or 5, our “family
movie” was “Stand By Me”.
Johnny loved to re-enact the scene where the boys are walking the railroad tracks and a train comes along.The problem is, John would be standing in a supermarket express line. Get a faraway look in his eyes, yell
“traaaaaiiiiinnnn”, hop down at on the oor, wherever we were. He hates that story. I don’t remind him.
***
We nd a path that follows the tracks, and then a smaller path that looks like it goes up the mountain. There are
no markers but it looks relatively easy to follow. I remind John to turn around, look at where we’ve been. “Youneed to see where you’ve been to know where you are going.” I sigh. I am a poet. My life is one big metaphor.
We head up the mountain. There had been a forest re a couple of weeks before. Blacks skeletons of trees, the
smell of burnt wood everywhere. I ask John if he wants to talk, tell him I was worried about the texts. “Oh,sorry mom. I know my texts sounded short. It’s this phone, I had to get a 1992 Sprint phone because my other
phone broke. Impossible to text on. I’m ne. Sorry you were worried.” His eyes are a gorgeous shade of blue.
His smile lights up the mountain.
 
***Sometime when John was in his late teens, I got a call. “Hi, this is the Worcester State Police. Do you have ason named John?” Within a split second of hearing those words, I wonder, “if they call to tell you your son has
died, do they say “hi” rst?” To this day, I can’t get a call without worrying it’s something wrong with one of my children. Not because of that call, because of all the calls. Because of all that could go wrong. Because of allthat does. Because of a responsibility that often feels far too much to handle.
My fears about John are profound. So profound that I didn’t know how to raise him, and so I didn’t. I worried,and I didn’t know what to do about the worry, so I drank instead. I was there, at least physically, until John wassixteen. The age I was when my father died. And when John needed me most, I left. I was an alcoholic at thetime. I did not leave nicely. My relationship with my kids, always fragile, was strained to the max. John blamed
many of his problems on me. I don’t blame him. Once I got sober, I blamed many of his problems on me. By
the time I actually realized I needed to take responsibility for raising him right, he well past eighteen. I was try-ing to clean up the mess I had made of my life, and I had to do it sober. Ask any recovering alcoholic how hardthat is.***John and I get to a point where we have to rock-scramble. We both lovethis part. The way you have to combine physical exertion with logic.
“To get to point C, grab on rock A and get a toehold on rock B”. We get
to the top of a ledge and look back. The land is a green carpet with theMass Pike running through it. A quarry is in the distance. We are dizzyand breathless. A hiker on his way down tells us it’s another mile to thetop. “You up for it, mom?” “You know I am,” I reply.***A year after I had left the family, I realized my relationship with my sonwas almost non-existent. In an effort to make up for all I hadn’t done,
I decide I need a grand gesture. We will climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. We y
to Africa, and mid-way over the Atlantic the captain says, “We havereached our cruising altitude of 19,000 feet.” I tell John, “Tomorrow, allwe have to do is wake up and walk up to the height of this plane.Then walk back down.“It’s the reason I love mountain climbing. It’s the only thing I have done my whole life where I understandexactly what success is. “Walk up to the top of the mountain. Walk back down.” It’s clear. It’s tangible. I’veclimbed hundreds of mountains, and love every ascent. Love every descent. And am always in awe at the sum-mit, a world-view of which I never tire.* * *Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with John was great, but it didn’t solve everything. There’s rarely a “happily everafter” between an alcoholic parent and their child, even a recovered one. It took me a year after that trip to get
sober, and a long time after that to start to gure out what I needed to do to make things right. To understand
that what I need to do is take action. Positive action. All the time. I need to demonstrate love, not just say the
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