TheBanyanTree: Chicken Little

[LLDeMerlè]

What I would like to know, of course, is why are we finding out now?  Why
are we finding out now that Andrew's GPA for last semester was 1.7?  We're
finding out now that he has dropped courses and not gone to classes for
Godknowshowlong.  We are finding out now that his plum summer job as a
counselor has been denied him this year, alarmingly following the denial of
his request to return to his non-summer job last fall.

When I saw Andrew for the first time in many weeks, I was amazed at how he
had changed.  He was big.  He hangs his head.  His hair is long and unkempt.
He is unwashed.  Unshaven.  Seemingly undone.  Again.  But, bigger.

There have been lapses off of the main road for him over the years, but
mostly, he has snapped out of it with some encouragement form his dad or
some counseling.  He puts on a brave face and tries to be cheerful.  Still,
I have always felt a phantom menace underneath it all, when he hit someone
at school with a bowling pin, when he hit our youngest, Stephen, when he was
disciplined by school for writing in someone's yearbook that "school might
not be here next year."  When he flung a mop across our kitchen and when he
trashed his mother's house and broke the glass on the door.  No one else
heard the foreboding clarinets or connected the dots but me.  No one paid
attention to my prophetic warnings, but I'm not hurt, it's not about my
feelings.  Why this current crisis was not anticipated baffles me. Why the
track record has been dismissed and not intervened bewilders me.

My husband is a good father.  He's been cut off at the knees by his sons'
mother as she limited access to them for no other reason than to feel
empowered.  They have spent most of their time alone over the past years,
while she commutes 4 hours a day to and from her work.  They have spent more
time at church than they have with their father, a grave error.

I can say it's her fault.  It doesn’t make me feel any better.  Approaching
suicidal means no time is to be wasted, but this is me, the powerless voice
with no practical authority.




LL