A Mother's Memories

He is 26 now. She still sees him when he was 4, picking tomatoes as soon as they turned red in the garden.

Taking a big bite as if into an apple. The big smile that came afterward.

She started him early in first grade. She will come back to this, blame herself for wanting him busy. Was this the decision that snowballed into his later addiction? An unanswerable question she poses to herself weekly, sometimes daily.

She sees him jumping on the beige fabric sofa with the bleached wood frame at six. She had just come home with a new baby, a little sister. He was so excited and so he jumped and jumped. She tried calling to him to stop the jumping. Warning him he would be hurt. One morning she heard the jumping and then the thud. He had fallen.  He had been hurt. He broke a toe. His spirit remained intact.

Until it didn't. He became addicted to drugs. The glass sharp memories. Visiting him in "Juvy," then visiting  him in "county", then in the "state pen". He wasn't a bad kid. It was always the drugs that led him to possession, to selling, to stealing. If he could stay clean,for a length of time that could be measured in days, not hours, the boy would return.

Before he had stole the wallet he had come asking for money. She wasn't home. She will come back to this, blame herself for being firm in not enabling him. Was this the decision that snowballed into his continuing incarceration and addiction. An unanswerable question she poses to herself weekly, sometimes daily. Even if she had been home, she would not have given him money. She was firm, she would not enable him. If she didn't enable him he would hit a bottom and get better, stay clean. He is still digging. She continues to wonder whether she has helped him dig with a shovel of her own.

He never hurt anybody. Until he did. It was self-defense. The boy with the bright red tomato became a man with a gun, pursued, he said, by a guy who wanted to kill him, by a guy who would end up dead. She has not visited. She will visit she tells herself. She will leave all of her belongings in her car and then the only thing she is allowed to carry inside the fence, her keys, in a locker. She will wait at the table for him to come out, all the while watching the other men with their families, they are older than her boy, more tattooed.  Some time needs to pass. She thinks the blame she places on herself needs to be diluted like her morning espresso, dark and activating, doused with Italian sweet cream and sugar, lots of sugar.