rivulet of spirits and smells the alcohol and feels a deep sense of relief.
In His own time and His own way, God answers my mother’s prayer.
Broken and distraught, my mother cries out for help. She knows she can’t continue on the course she’s on and is finding the courage to get off it. She calls me.
Robert, I have to go away for a while, she says.
What do you mean?
I need to get help. I’ve got to work on me and make some changes in my life.
The help is coming from a rehabilitation facility called Cumberland Heights, on the Cumberland River, west of Nashville. The treatment program lasts for thirty days. My mother is fifteen days in and I keep coming up with excuses why I can’t go see her. My guilt finally gets the better of me and I show up one afternoon. I drive through a stone entry gate and see vast expanses of land and white split-rail fences. Wisps of fog hang over the surrounding hills. It looks as if my mother is getting her treatment at a horse farm.
I walk into the main building and I feel my anxiety build. I am afraid and resentful. I do not want to be there. I do not want to see my mother in a rehab. I want her to get the help she needs and get better, but I am apprehensive about the whole visit, a feeling that is only heightened when I sign in and get a whiff of that unmistakable antiseptic smell of a hospital. I wonder where my mom is, and whether she’s going to be escorted out by two guys in white jackets who won’t let her handle anything sharp.
I wait in a large room with clusters of tables and chairs and ashtrays every three feet, all of them spilling over with cigarette butts. After a few minutes, my mother walks out with an orderly. She is wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. She looks good. Her eyes are clear. We go for a walk around a pond, and she talks about how great the program is, how she is facing hard truths about her own family background and learning to accept her powerlessness over alcohol and to own her behavior. She is praying to receive God’s strength and mercy. I don’t fully grasp the concept of alcoholism being a disease or the challenges of recovery, but I see a difference in my mother already, after just a couple of weeks. I see someone who doesn’t seem so beaten down by life anymore, who wants to find a different way. I know what she’s doing is hard work, and as sad as it makes me that she has to be in there, I’m proud that she has the guts to do that work.
What will she be like when she gets out? Will she really change her life? Will she be someone I can fully trust again? I don’t know. I hug her and tell her I love her, hopeful that she seems to be getting better and proud of her courage to go right at her problem. As I drive out of the stone gate, my guard is a little bit lower than it was when I drove in.
LATE ONE FRIDAY NIGHT in my junior year, after a Big Red victory, we go to our usual postgame hangout, Dalts Classic American Grill, for good food and high-quality milk shakes (I go for chocolate). When we finish, it’s almost eleven o’clock. We have practice in the morning. My dad’s house is twenty minutes away, across town.
I don’t feel like making the trip, knowing I have to be back at school first thing. Often I crash with friends who live right in Green Hills, kids like David Fitzgerald or Tiger Harris or Mike Anderson, my catcher in baseball, but I feel funny asking them if I can stay over again. I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I also don’t want to go home tonight. It’s a strong feeling. Home doesn’t feel like home. It’s where my father and Susan live, but it’s not a place I feel connected to. When I walk up the steps and open the door, I am not happy to be there. I don’t feel that I’ve reached a place of refuge and safety. I’ve just reached a place, four walls and a roof. I’m not saying it’s their fault. Maybe it’s mine. It just doesn’t feel that it’s where I belong.
Home, to be honest, is a place where
In His own time and His own way, God answers my mother’s prayer.
Broken and distraught, my mother cries out for help. She knows she can’t continue on the course she’s on and is finding the courage to get off it. She calls me.
Robert, I have to go away for a while, she says.
What do you mean?
I need to get help. I’ve got to work on me and make some changes in my life.
The help is coming from a rehabilitation facility called Cumberland Heights, on the Cumberland River, west of Nashville. The treatment program lasts for thirty days. My mother is fifteen days in and I keep coming up with excuses why I can’t go see her. My guilt finally gets the better of me and I show up one afternoon. I drive through a stone entry gate and see vast expanses of land and white split-rail fences. Wisps of fog hang over the surrounding hills. It looks as if my mother is getting her treatment at a horse farm.
I walk into the main building and I feel my anxiety build. I am afraid and resentful. I do not want to be there. I do not want to see my mother in a rehab. I want her to get the help she needs and get better, but I am apprehensive about the whole visit, a feeling that is only heightened when I sign in and get a whiff of that unmistakable antiseptic smell of a hospital. I wonder where my mom is, and whether she’s going to be escorted out by two guys in white jackets who won’t let her handle anything sharp.
I wait in a large room with clusters of tables and chairs and ashtrays every three feet, all of them spilling over with cigarette butts. After a few minutes, my mother walks out with an orderly. She is wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. She looks good. Her eyes are clear. We go for a walk around a pond, and she talks about how great the program is, how she is facing hard truths about her own family background and learning to accept her powerlessness over alcohol and to own her behavior. She is praying to receive God’s strength and mercy. I don’t fully grasp the concept of alcoholism being a disease or the challenges of recovery, but I see a difference in my mother already, after just a couple of weeks. I see someone who doesn’t seem so beaten down by life anymore, who wants to find a different way. I know what she’s doing is hard work, and as sad as it makes me that she has to be in there, I’m proud that she has the guts to do that work.
What will she be like when she gets out? Will she really change her life? Will she be someone I can fully trust again? I don’t know. I hug her and tell her I love her, hopeful that she seems to be getting better and proud of her courage to go right at her problem. As I drive out of the stone gate, my guard is a little bit lower than it was when I drove in.
LATE ONE FRIDAY NIGHT in my junior year, after a Big Red victory, we go to our usual postgame hangout, Dalts Classic American Grill, for good food and high-quality milk shakes (I go for chocolate). When we finish, it’s almost eleven o’clock. We have practice in the morning. My dad’s house is twenty minutes away, across town.
I don’t feel like making the trip, knowing I have to be back at school first thing. Often I crash with friends who live right in Green Hills, kids like David Fitzgerald or Tiger Harris or Mike Anderson, my catcher in baseball, but I feel funny asking them if I can stay over again. I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I also don’t want to go home tonight. It’s a strong feeling. Home doesn’t feel like home. It’s where my father and Susan live, but it’s not a place I feel connected to. When I walk up the steps and open the door, I am not happy to be there. I don’t feel that I’ve reached a place of refuge and safety. I’ve just reached a place, four walls and a roof. I’m not saying it’s their fault. Maybe it’s mine. It just doesn’t feel that it’s where I belong.
Home, to be honest, is a place where
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