They came again this morning. There lining arc of our horseshoe driveway like a convoy of mutant, navy blue beetles were four police squad cars.
By Susan Creamer Joy - Thursday 22 Sep 2011
They came again this morning. It was early, just after eight. Only this time I didn’t hear the metallic creak of the wrought iron gate at the top of the steps outside our front door, that rusted yawn that signals to me the presence of friend or enemy. The dogs, whose Bremen Town-substitution is unreliable, were scattered about the house and yard and failed to alert me. In the absence of a working doorbell, these are the substitute warnings I depend upon. And so I continued to strip the sheets from our bed and carry on my mundane ritual with the drowsy acceptance of early morning normal.
It wasn’t until I reached for a dropped pillowslip and glanced out the window of our upstairs bedroom that I noticed them. There, lining the arc of our horseshoe driveway like a convoy of mutant, navy blue beetles, were four police squad cars.
To someone else this sight might be alarming. It might seem extraordinary or in raw juxtaposition to their experience of a sane reality. They might immediately assume there has been some horrible mistake or that a faulty address had led these misguided officers of the peace to their door.
To someone else this scene might seem surreal, and although I still have empathy for and a distinct memory of that innocent and flustered reaction, it is remote.
It has been a long time since I have felt like someone else.
In the nine years since my son became a prescription-dependent drug addict, scenes like this one have unfolded with uncanny regularity. The felony of prescription fraud is not lightly regarded among those sworn to uphold the law and to protect the righteous, nor should it be.
I don’t fault these uniformed enforcers their obligation to carry out their duty. They are merely following orders. I just wish they would get their facts in tow and perhaps exercise a little more diplomacy and tact in the execution of their job. However, this morning I did not make it to the door in time, and because it took me too long to notice them and to answer a doorbell that does not ring, four of the six officers had dispersed according to protocol and surrounded the house; leaving the two who did not the job of ringing the door of the neighbors who live directly behind us.
Why?
In the past I have summarily accepted the attendant shame and humiliation of such public maneuvers because I had no choice. My son was guilty and plagued by felony warrants for his arrest. This was his last known address. This is where the police and probation officers, where the swat teams and detectives routinely surfaced.
Of course, the shattered irony of today comes because he has been in custody for the past 18 months.
Mistakenly, I believed that the days of high drama and the sweeping, public displays of marshaling my offending son were behind us. Do they not have the same computer access that I do? Could they not attempt to uncover this fact before they rushed my home and badgered my neighbors with questions?
Although our neighbors have no doubt witnessed and wondered about the frequency with which we were graced by visits from the local police in the past, they have had the decency not to query us about it. We maintain a friendly and polite relationship, purposely downwind of intimate.
Today, that has all changed.
By the time I opened the front door of my house, the two uniformed spokesmen were returning to their vehicles, bulletproof vests intact. They told me they did not think anyone was at home and had gone on to question our young neighbors about what they knew. They told them my son was a felon with three warrants in two states. They asked them if he had been seen lurking around the neighborhood or if they believed we were sheltering him. They admonished this innocent young couple on the severity of withholding information should they think to do so and withdrew from their front door issuing a stern warning should they think this anything but a very serious matter.
From my drawing table as I look through the French doors of my studio, I have often watched the young mother as she played with her small son and toddling daughter on the greening carpet of their front lawn, and with every observation I was taken back to that time when my son and eldest daughter were those exact ages.
In the temperate months, seduced by the air and earthy pleasures outdoors, they frequent their yard and the colorful scramble of plastic balls and battered toys. Lured to watch by their high, pebbled laughter, my eyes follow the trail of their chatter with my heart in sound conspiracy in spite of my best efforts to shut them out.
In the stony wake of my unsettled soul, they provide a window to a past that I hold onto with fierce but weary pride. Often I am afraid it was a past that perhaps held the best of me and of what my life could ever be.
Several times this young mother and I have spoken of the similarity in ages and dispositions of her children now as compared to mine so many years ago, and we shared a collusive chuckle at how easily smiling came to our sons and how innately protective they are of their younger sisters even at that fledgling age. I assured her that this propensity for watching over both of his younger sisters still remains paramount for my son all these many years later.
But now that the facts of his iniquity have been made known to them with such force and clarity, I will not mention this to her again. I could not bear to face the awkwardness that will exist between us as she silently prays for an end to any such similarities between her innocent little boy and the recollections of my own. I do not want to sully the perfect grace of these softly white years with the awful concern that such loaded darkness could ever descend upon them.
Every time my eyes wander through those doors and my heart digs into the soft cache of remembering bedtime stories and bruised knees and whiffle ball games in the summer twilight of the backyard, I also am reminded that the present end does not fit my past dreams for it and that my son is not the only one whose body and soul are now confined: He is confined by law. I am, by love.
Yet our neighbors remain visible beyond my window and as they exist in all of their burgeoning happiness, it is with an incursive and galling shame that I am simultaneously confronted by the realization that although my early walk through motherhood began with the same sure-footed and deep nurturing and that I sang to my children the same mild lullabies and blanketed the close of each day with the gentle grace of bedside prayers and soft kisses; I am at this moment not able to bath in the peace of having successfully completed that passage nor in the joy at seeing a reflection of those years in their young family.
This morning I politely informed the police of their mistake, that my son is currently in prison and will be so for some time. I watched them watch me and wondered, as I always do, what were they thinking? Were they looking for the cracks within my maternal countenance? Did they assume that I surely must have some radical deficit in my own character in order to yield or enable such a damaged offspring? Were they suspect of my veracity based on his present circumstance? Would they label my family suspicious and bring even more pain to my husband and our other children?
How did this happen and where did I go wrong?
I routinely ask those questions of myself and certainly don’t fault anyone else for doing so. The facts themselves have buried any possible recourse to full absolution and given me little choice, so I reluctantly move into the field of temporary defeat where I feel compelled to entertain the questions and speculations whenever and from whomever they come – especially my own.
I may never have the answers.
Blessedly, the neighbors need not know that, too.
It wasn’t until I reached for a dropped pillowslip and glanced out the window of our upstairs bedroom that I noticed them. There, lining the arc of our horseshoe driveway like a convoy of mutant, navy blue beetles, were four police squad cars.
To someone else this sight might be alarming. It might seem extraordinary or in raw juxtaposition to their experience of a sane reality. They might immediately assume there has been some horrible mistake or that a faulty address had led these misguided officers of the peace to their door.
To someone else this scene might seem surreal, and although I still have empathy for and a distinct memory of that innocent and flustered reaction, it is remote.
It has been a long time since I have felt like someone else.
In the nine years since my son became a prescription-dependent drug addict, scenes like this one have unfolded with uncanny regularity. The felony of prescription fraud is not lightly regarded among those sworn to uphold the law and to protect the righteous, nor should it be.
I don’t fault these uniformed enforcers their obligation to carry out their duty. They are merely following orders. I just wish they would get their facts in tow and perhaps exercise a little more diplomacy and tact in the execution of their job. However, this morning I did not make it to the door in time, and because it took me too long to notice them and to answer a doorbell that does not ring, four of the six officers had dispersed according to protocol and surrounded the house; leaving the two who did not the job of ringing the door of the neighbors who live directly behind us.
Why?
In the past I have summarily accepted the attendant shame and humiliation of such public maneuvers because I had no choice. My son was guilty and plagued by felony warrants for his arrest. This was his last known address. This is where the police and probation officers, where the swat teams and detectives routinely surfaced.
Of course, the shattered irony of today comes because he has been in custody for the past 18 months.
Mistakenly, I believed that the days of high drama and the sweeping, public displays of marshaling my offending son were behind us. Do they not have the same computer access that I do? Could they not attempt to uncover this fact before they rushed my home and badgered my neighbors with questions?
Although our neighbors have no doubt witnessed and wondered about the frequency with which we were graced by visits from the local police in the past, they have had the decency not to query us about it. We maintain a friendly and polite relationship, purposely downwind of intimate.
Today, that has all changed.
By the time I opened the front door of my house, the two uniformed spokesmen were returning to their vehicles, bulletproof vests intact. They told me they did not think anyone was at home and had gone on to question our young neighbors about what they knew. They told them my son was a felon with three warrants in two states. They asked them if he had been seen lurking around the neighborhood or if they believed we were sheltering him. They admonished this innocent young couple on the severity of withholding information should they think to do so and withdrew from their front door issuing a stern warning should they think this anything but a very serious matter.
From my drawing table as I look through the French doors of my studio, I have often watched the young mother as she played with her small son and toddling daughter on the greening carpet of their front lawn, and with every observation I was taken back to that time when my son and eldest daughter were those exact ages.
In the temperate months, seduced by the air and earthy pleasures outdoors, they frequent their yard and the colorful scramble of plastic balls and battered toys. Lured to watch by their high, pebbled laughter, my eyes follow the trail of their chatter with my heart in sound conspiracy in spite of my best efforts to shut them out.
In the stony wake of my unsettled soul, they provide a window to a past that I hold onto with fierce but weary pride. Often I am afraid it was a past that perhaps held the best of me and of what my life could ever be.
Several times this young mother and I have spoken of the similarity in ages and dispositions of her children now as compared to mine so many years ago, and we shared a collusive chuckle at how easily smiling came to our sons and how innately protective they are of their younger sisters even at that fledgling age. I assured her that this propensity for watching over both of his younger sisters still remains paramount for my son all these many years later.
But now that the facts of his iniquity have been made known to them with such force and clarity, I will not mention this to her again. I could not bear to face the awkwardness that will exist between us as she silently prays for an end to any such similarities between her innocent little boy and the recollections of my own. I do not want to sully the perfect grace of these softly white years with the awful concern that such loaded darkness could ever descend upon them.
Every time my eyes wander through those doors and my heart digs into the soft cache of remembering bedtime stories and bruised knees and whiffle ball games in the summer twilight of the backyard, I also am reminded that the present end does not fit my past dreams for it and that my son is not the only one whose body and soul are now confined: He is confined by law. I am, by love.
Yet our neighbors remain visible beyond my window and as they exist in all of their burgeoning happiness, it is with an incursive and galling shame that I am simultaneously confronted by the realization that although my early walk through motherhood began with the same sure-footed and deep nurturing and that I sang to my children the same mild lullabies and blanketed the close of each day with the gentle grace of bedside prayers and soft kisses; I am at this moment not able to bath in the peace of having successfully completed that passage nor in the joy at seeing a reflection of those years in their young family.
This morning I politely informed the police of their mistake, that my son is currently in prison and will be so for some time. I watched them watch me and wondered, as I always do, what were they thinking? Were they looking for the cracks within my maternal countenance? Did they assume that I surely must have some radical deficit in my own character in order to yield or enable such a damaged offspring? Were they suspect of my veracity based on his present circumstance? Would they label my family suspicious and bring even more pain to my husband and our other children?
How did this happen and where did I go wrong?
I routinely ask those questions of myself and certainly don’t fault anyone else for doing so. The facts themselves have buried any possible recourse to full absolution and given me little choice, so I reluctantly move into the field of temporary defeat where I feel compelled to entertain the questions and speculations whenever and from whomever they come – especially my own.
I may never have the answers.
Blessedly, the neighbors need not know that, too.