“Have you tried a good wallop?” the officer asks.
“What?” I stare at him dumbly.
“You know, some old-fashioned corporal punishment?” He says.
“Sir, he's 5'6” and 135 lbs. I think the time for spanking is well behind us.”
The other cop opens the driver's side door, shifts his weight awkwardly and finally taps his nightstick on the door-frame as if doing so officially ends his engagement in this matter.
“Well you try to have a good night ma'am.”
The pro-spanking officer steps around me without another word and slides into the cruiser.
“Perhaps I'll just go sit in his bedroom and enjoy the contact high.” My sarcasm is noted by no one because no one is listening. I stand on the sidewalk in the quiet neighborhood just blocks from where I grew up while my consequence of last resort drives off into the night.
They hadn't wanted to come inside in the first place, but I insisted. They had been hesitant to enter Jordan's bedroom without her consent but again, I insisted. They stood casually in the center of her smoke-filled room and delivered a rote “You need to listen to your mother.” speech while Jordan lounged on her bed, propped on one elbow, tossing popcorn kernels into her mouth.
Jay is sick of saying it. I am sick of trying to enforce it and clearly Jordan has tuned it out a long time ago. Often I come home to a lingering smell in the hall or a whiff of it on her dirty laundry, but tonight her flagrant disregard for the You-Cannot-Smoke-Pot-In-This-House rule actually created a haze which wooshed out the bedroom door behind her when she popped into the kitchen for a bowl of popcorn after dinner. Calling the police was part of the “limit-setting and consequences” strategy that Jordan's current therapist has suggested.
I clomp dejectedly back inside after the cruiser's tail-lights disappear at the end of the block. Jay is playing a game at his computer and I lean near him against the doorjam between the dining room and living room.
“Well that was crushing defeat.” I say, “Now what?”
“I guess you could take away his popcorn.” Jay sighs.
On Wednesdays, Jordan has a standing date with her grandmother followed by an appointment with her therapist Linda. My mother has magical powers where Jordan is concerned. The child transforms into some nearly angelic being in her presence. Sure, she's still loud and wall-bouncing but overall she's cheerful, engaged and a joy to be around. The sulky suit of teenage hormones and dark clouds of rage are nowhere to be found when Grandma is in the house.
My mother doesn't care much for cooking in general, but she loves to bake and it is one of those things that she and Jordan enjoy together. What has become quite clear by the Fall of 2007 is that Jordan especially loves to bake with her grandmother while baked. This habit is obvious enough that at one point, Linda pulls my mother aside when she drops Jordan off for therapy and asks, point blank.
“You realize that he's high as a kite right now, right?”
“I wouldn't know anything about that.” my mother responds.
“Like stoned out of his gourd.” Linda says.
“I had no idea.” And god help her, she didn't.
“I just want you to know because it's important that he comes here sober so we can get some real work done.” Both women repeat this story to me after-the-fact, Linda slightly amused. Mom not so much.
There are certain things that my mother prefers to not know anything about. Just last week, I casually mentioned something related to Linda being a lesbian and my mother immediately said, “I wouldn't know anything about that”. I suspect that in the therapist's case, it is because if she admitted to knowing such things then she'd have to add another nice, ordinary gay person to the ever-growing list of her acquaintances. Doing so would of course bring her one friendly face closer to dealing with the possibility that the militant gay army she's been led to believe is intent on destroying the fabric of society might not actually exist.
She would also prefer not to know anything about Jordan's drug habits; in general, that she even HAS drug habits and specifically that one of those habits is getting high before she goes to bake with Grandma. As far as my mother is concerned, her youngest grandson is just a cheerful, high-energy child who needs some good parenting, consistency and Jesus. To admit that she has enjoyed the company of stoned Jory would be somehow improper. To realize that a person “on drugs” could be polite and engaging and quite honestly, occasionally delightful to be around would go against every fiber of her being and everything she believes about drugs and addicts and such. Like the nice lesbian therapist, she'd really rather not know.
One of the things that nobody wants to talk about is the secret relief you feel when you're dreading the descent of the dark cloud, expecting your little monster to come through the door with that “everything is horrible and everyone should just die” attitude but instead you are greeted with “Hey Mom, Grandma and I made some Blonde Brownies for you. Do you want to chill with me and watch 'Lucy'?”
These are the days when nothing gets broken, no dogs are kicked and no doors slam. These are the days you get a hug for no reason and maybe even an “I love you” that isn't followed immediately by some outlandish request which negates it.
At some point you figure out that if you only consent to engage with your child when they are stone cold sober, you may never get to say a kind word to them again. The truth is, you can't rid the world of marijuana, even if you pluck every joint from the skateboarders in the park, pat down the band geeks under the bleachers and roll the old man who hangs out behind the liquor store. And if you could, well in all fairness, you're going to need to confiscate the mid-afternoon Xanex from the PTA mothers, Friday Night six-packs from the average Dads and whatever other substances the rest of us reach for when we want a little something to take the edge off.
You're welcome to join my mother in not knowing anything about that. But I refuse to. When I find Jordan's stash, I flush it. When I can keep her engaged and/or corralled well enough to keep her sober, I do. But when she pops into my office with a crooked grin, fresh-baked goodies and an unexpected desire to indulge in The Long, Long Trailer, I acquiesce. And when Jay comes home a while later to find us reeling with laughter as Desi Arnez mucks through the mud with a tire jack, a wave of relief washes over us. Even the house sighs.
Later, when the speed and opiates show up on the scene, plenty of people will line up to point their fingers at the permissiveness of pot, but I'll be looking over their shoulders pointing even further back to the Ritalin and Strattera and Adderall, to all the pills that all the teachers and school administrators insisted we shovel into her from the first grade on in hopes of chilling her out. They too wanted that sigh of relief and never considered the consequences of medicating the agitation out of a gifted but difficult child or questioned what we were teaching her along the way.
Note: My youngest child died at the age of 16 from an Onycontin overdose. One year earlier, she revealed her true gender and changed her name from Jordan to Alice. The cross-gender pronoun usage, while awkward here is intentional. More of Alice/Jordan's story is posted at Laurustina.com.