The Slowest Count

Indistinguishable thumping followed by crashing noises and wood splintering interrupted my nightly ritual of washing and drying dinner dishes. I dropped the tea towel, flew down the hall and up the stairs. The noise stopped. I stopped too, with my hand on the doorknob to my youngest son’s room, Schrodinger’s cat heavy in my mind, knowing that this was a box I had to open, but it could change everything.

Turning the knob, I peered into the silence and spotted the curled-up legs of my youngest, who, even though he was in Grade 10, had been tucking me into bed nightly with a kiss because I went to bed before he did.  “I don’t want to be here anymore,” came his voice from beneath the remnants of his anger. He was nested under his mattresses, his desk, his bed, and the computer he had built, all topped with a feather-light coating of drywall powder from the large, jagged holes now pocking his walls.

I needed to banish the stress blurring my vision, so I sank to the ground beside him and focused on the practical training from my past role as a Kids Help Phone responder. I asked the last words a mother wants to say to her child, “Do you want to kill yourself?”  Direct was best.

 “I can’t do it anymore,” he said. I took it as a yes. Next question.

“Do you have a plan?” Silence. “You can tell me,” I whispered.

“Not you,” he sobbed. “Not you,” and he was right. We got into the van and drove to the nearest medical facility with an in-house Youth Mental Health unit. I thought he would talk to someone, and he did, after he told me to leave. His life was private. His truths were not for my ears. I sat in the waiting room, reigning in my imagination, which has not always been my friend.

They kept him, and I went home alone, driving through my darkest night, barely seeing the road, with no answers and no true understanding.

Up until that point, my toughest year of motherhood had been when my children were four, two and nothing because, at times, they all had opposing, immediate needs which I couldn’t meet. I couldn’t change a diaper, get a four-year-old a drink and make a two-year-old sit in a well-deserved time out all at once. That year taught me if I could manage to count to twenty, the moment would crest, and I could rise out of the chaos. But I had no alternate strategies to support me through this uncertainty, so I began my slowest count.

When he disappeared from school and social media during that first trip to the hospital, a posse of boys showed up at our door demanding to know what we’d done with their friend. “He’s okay,” I told them. They asked again, but he’s okay was all I had.

These boys were lifelong friends, their faces interspersed throughout photo albums and Facebook posts. I knew, of late, they were up to no good, yet I wanted my son to spend time with them. If it weren’t for the isolating impact of COVID on his Grade 7 and 8 years, I might have been more vigilant.

During their Grade 9 year, he went out at night but came home at a reasonable hour and tucked me in with that kiss before going to bed.  Everything seemed fine. He went to school daily without a complaint. There was none of the belligerence I associated with teenagerhood. I cherished his outward love, wondering every night when this last remnant of childhood would end.

I didn’t blame his friends. I blamed the new structure of school post-COVID shutdown. We knew his way of learning didn’t fit the school system expectations. In elementary school, one teacher used to snap her fingers in his face to make sure he was listening, and his kindergarten report card stated that although it didn’t seem like he was paying attention, he always knew the answer. He certainly didn’t love writing or reading, but let him build, let him draw, let him present, and his knowledge shone through.

He had achieved every credit in Grade 9, but it seemed the idea of continuing through Grade 10 with desks in measured rows, mandatory masks, and teachers lecturing through slide decks before assigning online worksheets for another year was too much. I didn’t know he needed to self-medicate to get himself to and through school. I didn’t know that the abandoned trains were where he and his friends created their safe spot. I didn’t know that dealers had seen his ability to make connections and wanted him to do the same for them.

I had prided myself on being a mother who knew where her kids were. I knew their friends and families. I would go through rooms, drawers and beds to ensure there were no surprises. I would brazenly knock on the door of a new friend’s house to introduce myself to the family and get the necessary contact information if I saw the need.  But he was many steps ahead of me.

Those details of his life emerged after that night in October. Once he was home again, I couldn’t get him to go to school many mornings, and I would leave for work driving through my tears once more. If he did go to school, he would leave the building as he wished. He might go to the gym, but the automated attendance call to inform me of his absence would arrive after 6 p.m. Much too late to be of any help.

Some nights, I could hear him pacing, so we’d load into the car and hit the McDonald’s drive-through. It was easier for him to talk, staring into the reflected light of the headlights on the road. We drove through country back roads, staring out at the fields, trees, barns and the glowing windows illuminating small glimpses of the lives within.

Occasionally, it was all I could do to keep driving. His illuminations were punctuated with, “Is that what you wanted to hear?” Of course, they weren’t, but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t blame, and I couldn’t lecture. I needed to listen so he could talk. Then I could make plans, like counselling, psychological services, calls to poison control or a return trip to the hospital. Like the trains, I needed to be the safe spot.

During my short leave from work, I spoke to counsellors to ensure I was supported. My doctor was positive I needed medication, but I didn’t think numbing my senses would support me. In retrospect, I should have accepted the medication but not taken it; maybe then she would have extended my leave, instead of stating I needed to learn to deal with it. I was exploring ways to maintain calm. I continued with acupuncture. I discovered sound baths both in person and through apps. I did yoga. I walked the dog in the forest. I saw friends, and I often cried, alone in the car, where no one could hear me.

That’s when feathers began to appear. Bright blue jay beacons in the middle of the mountain bike trail, perfectly formed two-foot-long brown and white striped turkey feathers blocking my car’s path, and tiny white feathers glowing from the midst of the dark hardwood floor as I entered the house. They arrived at my lowest points. I looked up the meaning of the appearance of feathers. Many sites stated it meant I was being watched over and cared for.  I decided the feathers were a reminder from the universe, telling me it would be okay. Could I be manifesting? Undoubtedly. But I needed something to symbolize hope as the months within this slowest count ticked by.

One day after leaving Sunday morning acupuncture, I was still distraught. I felt stuck. Nothing was changing. I had planned on picking up vegetables from the farmer’s market. I parked on the road and crossed the railway tracks, passing those trains to enter the market, when both time and I stood still. I was encircled within a murmuration of white, gray and brown feathers. I took in their perfection and spewed out a laugh. They were evenly spaced around me. No blood, bones or bits to explain their presence. Perfectly nonsensical.  Apparently, I was beyond subtleties.

I dug in to create change. I pulled him from the local high school, where he wasn’t obtaining credits and refused to complete the worksheet packets provided for home completion. I enrolled him in an alternative school, which I knew would provide him with credits through a paid work co-op.

After a slew of online applications, a local arborist company offered him an interview as a general labourer. “I don’t have any experience,” he stated, questioning why they would even interview him.

“They know that,” I said. He got the job, which included climbing, cutting and chipping trees, fixing chainsaws and maintaining the blades on the chipper. It was a 3.0 version of the days when, to his delight, we would give him duct tape and cardboard boxes for Christmas. There was a regular schedule paired with physical and mental demands, and he was thriving as he worked to meet those challenges.

My slowest count didn’t move forward at a consistent speed. Some still contained a punch through the wall, and my mental health rose and plummeted, synchronized with his.  One night, the sound meditation I attended felt like a much-needed wire brush scrubbing me clean from the inside out. In closing, we each drew a tarot card. My card centred the image of a feather wafting smoke in a smudging ceremony -- an image of cleansing, protection and grounding. As long as I was silent, my emotions remained intact, but when it was my turn to share my perception of my card, my sobs spilled into the room.

It was the message I needed and still need.  I may not have a posse coming to my door, but the universe, with its unprescribed reminders, helps me to stay aloft, still waiting for twenty to arrive.