I have found my old wings tucked in a seam between an upstairs wall and window, ready for the open air. I am reminded. For seven of ten days my son’s Dad’s house has been my shelter, sleeping with my son, C and all his challenges temporarily under the same roof again. It has brought me great comfort, and at the same time I have folded my wings in, perched myself high on the hill, vigilant.
I was delivered to the house with a foot still healing from fracture and ten days worth of food, books, pens and paper, and laptop ready to make use of the time when C was out with his mates. The house sits high above a valley town, tricky on crutches and buses. It has felt like camping with finite food, making nutritious, carefully prepared meals to maximise resources and feed my bones maxim oomph. My animal has quickly made my own nest within the rest, and mindfully forged simple routines and found an embodied flow, to find my place within someone else’s space.
This is a small house, four rooms stacked neatly on top of one another. The basement, of course, is C’s cave. I gravitate between the different floors, consciously inhabiting space for different activities to break the day. My mornings are spent on the ground floor in the kitchen/living area softening into the peace that fills the hours before C arises, usually an hour before midday. In the afternoon I move to the first floor for a little distance from the gaming and play fighting downstairs, and leave the distracting flicker of cars through a generous window. There is no garden to buffer the traffic who slow at the junction outside, and the passersby who inevitably turn to look within. I feel a little exposed. When I moved into this house 20 years ago, I had been living sixteen floors high, away from any outdoor gaze and I was jumpy at the window movement for many months. At my home in Cornwall I have become accustomed to a moat of lawn and shield of shrubs in-front of my window. My defensive words are noted, I know I fair better with a little distance and dilution between my safe place and the outside human world. The large window at C’s main home is a thin skin between me and a small village, where there will still be plenty of opinion of my leaving 8 years ago, my reappearance, let alone the opinions of my son. I should not care, but I do.
I have laid low this past week, behind a front door to buffer the accusations, parental stories and ignorance. I have kept house, waiting for a potential knock of law after the latest incident. Each morning I have risen early, showered, dressed and ready, I do not want to be caught unprepared. This wreaks of paranoia I know, but it is how normal life became when C lived in Cornwall. I pass time deep in the tale of Norwegian witch trials and watch myself in my self-imposed tower, keeping vigil, tending to the troubled and buried wonder that is my son.
My son, currently a boy carrying a hard shell of behaviours, guarding the complexity of traumas within. I watch him walk with all the toxic masculinity he can muster, in disbelief at the words that form in his mouth, and many of the choices he makes. My son, a centre soft with sunshine and humour, moving with the beat of music and the creativity of an engineer’s mind. The boy who spits and smokes whilst he puffs up to occupy a bigger space, to find his place. A boy who has lost an internal compass and looks to peers and TikTok to tell. My son, bullied and now sometimes bully, a leader who shines, and a pied piper that manipulates. My son the liar that cannot hide his truth from me, my sun.
Whilst C flails seeking refuge in performance and anti-social behaviours, his Dad, my partner and I attempt to hold and steer, waiting for additional support in these slow time waves. He moved away from his sister and myself back to his Dad in the North nine months ago, a decision made in a desperate and loving attempt to affect some change. At the very least he now feels he has more of a sense of place in this county, so those roots we nurture.
Oh, the desire to swaddle him and once again carry him on my back, over hill and dale. North, we will go North, then West, wade across across the sound to our island of Mull, put the sea between us and it all, cocoon in love, dilute the shadow. And yet this would only afford some delay, for the affect of these histories will always rise, gathering force as they roll.
Sea as metaphor. I come to the sea to make sense, for council. I am called to seek my refuge in their elemental power, suspended in their command. I find support in the sea’s constant change, its depth of knowing. The horizon steadies me. The tide whispers perspective, of the greater forces that guide all. At times of death or loss of love, I have taken my grief and overwhelm to the water, absorbing its rhythm to reset my base and breath, like lying on a Mother or Lover’s chest soothed in heartbeat and the comfort of other. I honour Water as the great receiver, absorbing residue and memory from all that it touches, offering back from its deep records, an ocean of possibilities. Back in landlocked times, long baths hold Water around me, unlocking my guard so that thoughts seep beyond my skin.
When C was four I wrote a poem speaking of my journey to becoming his Adoptive Mom, and of the big spirit I watched with skin-bursting pride as he careered around the playground. I wanted all the other parents to know the depth and strength of this small boy. “It Couldn’t Be More Natural, Thanks” was fierce with love, written with the eye of a Lion mother. A decade on and I prowl once more. I see beyond the armour of smoke and peers and spells, to the fragmented boy who doesn't know who he is. This week I have kept time, a mother metronome, doing all the things we do to care and clean, but mainly making sure he eats and eats well. I bade time for when he talks, opens a small door. I have felt moments when he softens and receives a gentle hand on head, a soft kiss in hair, and small moments of hope, sitting together to eat, supplies brought home, a thank you, a “Mum”. All moments to hold if another wave of what now? comes, taking breath violently, all nerves alight and prayers said.
And where is the village? I sadden and frustrate at a society that has long forgotten it takes a village to raise a child. A society that demonstrates little tolerance of teens and their promise, let alone the care for the ones who need it most. It is the same society that ignores its elders and their gifts, that operates in a narrow bandwidth of belonging. I shall use ‘We’ for we all have some responsibility in this wasteland. We want everything neat and tidy, compartmentalised and quick fixed, no messiness, no shadow, nothing too near our own door. We don't want to acknowledge and address the dark realities that seep around us all, of abuse, neglect and un-belonging, the society from which these spawn and all the behaviours that these breed. We live in a culture of the individual, of being constantly offended, driven by fear, of speaking unwavering opinion and leaving it to someone else to sort out. Did I dream a lockdown where we found community and compassion? Remember the power of the circle, the power of a fire? Every village needs a hearth around which to gather and support.
Where is Our nurture? Or our investment, if you want to frame it in the Capitalist terms that have decimated services and activities for our children and young people. We are a society that ostracises and penalises children who grew in barren soil. My son’s Dad and I are text accusations of irresponsibility, are told to punish and deprive, asserting these as firm boundaries, accusing us of damaging our son. It is too easy to issue edicts that ignore the neuroscience which speaks to how a child’s brain is significantly altered by early adversity and stress. It is too easy to refute that what works for brains already fragmented, is to tend to the root, identifying what is happening to the brain underneath the behaviour. Old time tough love will only compound the problem, and around we go again. There are no quick fixes, there is empathy, love and slow unpicking and reprogramming.
What would trees do? We are learning that forests are cooperative networks where younger trees are nurtured by Mother trees, and struggling individuals are supported by others. There is a collective responsibility where resources, vigilance for threats and information are all shared. Trees grow bound together. And so gratitude to the friends and family that support us with unconditional love and empathy, some who know these journeys only too well.
My time passed so quickly in Yorkshire. I finish writing this back in Cornwall, too far away from my son, distracting myself as I wait for another Duty worker to respond to yet another call for support for a boy in crisis. My son has been arrested this morning.