The Family Tree

(Trigger Warnings: profanity, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, prison/parole)

December 31, 2028, 12:45 AM

Son,

Happy Birthday!

I realize your birthday is technically not until around 8:08 AM, but I’ve been having a difficult time falling and staying asleep lately. Ryan tells me he has very vivid dreams that he’s a motorcycle - I tell him it’s called snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. I think I’m developing a Unisom habit simply because he refuses to take a sinus pill.

I am sitting at the dining room table, and guess what? It’s snowing! Yep, in the place where all we can really count on is black ice and slush... but there are big, fluffy, white snowflakes falling from the sky. I snuck a couple of fingers of Bailey’s into my cup of decaf. Maybe it will help me sleep through Ryan’s cross-country journey as a Harley.

Snow has always fascinated me with its silence. Since I was a girl, I thought snowflakes should make some sound as they hit the ground, but quite the opposite seems to occur – it’s almost as if each flake turns the volume of Life down a little.

I carried that expectation into adulthood (probably, because of how rarely it snows here). It seems to me that it would announce itself in some fashion. If I were a perfectly imperfect unique flake of snow that is suddenly making an appearance somewhere I usually do not, I’d want to make an announcement!

“RAZZLE DAZZLE, MFKRS!”

(Okay, I might leave out the MFKR part…)

Alas! Here I sit with my Baileys and decaf while Ryan dreams of being powered by gasoline. The view out of the windows really is stunning. Remember that first year we moved here, and there were snow flurries, and a herd of deer strolled through the yard. I was standing at this very window and was literally jumping up and down about the flurries, and the deer, and Ryan dryly said, “Yep, Babe, it’s a GD Winter Wonderland out there!”

What a smart ass that man is!

Now, it really does look like a Winter Wonderland, but I don’t see any deer, and you and your sisters are grown and gone, Ryan’s the literal Old Man That's Snoring… so I have no one to get excited with. It’s kind of disheartening, really. So is the purpose behind this rambling missive –

Gavin, I want more than anything in the world for the State of Texas to allow you to finally parole out.

I need you to read that and really 'hear' it.

You don’t belong in there anymore; you haven’t belonged in there for YEARS now. Revocation of probation, bail jumping, and possession of methamphetamines aside, I have watched people on the San Antonio news get sentenced to less time than you, and they KILLED people.

I do not understand the way these people figure out who is penalized and for how long. Furthermore, what is the point? It certainly doesn’t seem to be rehabilitation or to be used as a deterrent... If that were the case, I feel like there would not be so many people doing multiple tours.

AH! It’s so galling!

You told me they don’t really grant parole to people with nowhere to land… no support system. I hear you. I’m picking up what you’re putting down, Son.

However, I find myself in this impossible predicament – I am your Mom. I love you. I want you to have a happy future. I don’t want you to go back to using. I don’t want to bury my 20-something-year-old child… it would destroy me.

In response to your request, though, I am so incredibly sorry, but I have to say- no. I’m sitting here watching these flakes fall, and I notice the tree branches sagging under the weight of the snow as it accumulates. Eventually, it will snap and fall to the ground, no longer a piece of the whole. I'm also watching how each fragile flake begins to break apart as it lands on the windowsill.

Son, trust is a lot like that. It can be this beautiful thing, but once it falls apart… It’s never the same.

You can try to force it into its original condition, but in doing so… it ultimately just melts on your fingers and then evaporates and it is gone. It fundamentally changes the properties of matter.

I want you to hold that image of the tree by the front patio, blanketed in snow with more and more piling upon itself. The tree never imagined that such a catastrophic thing as the SNAP of an entire branch would befall it.

The other branches are bearing their own burdens and are just as shocked at the sudden loss of one of its own as the tree itself and the branch now lying upon the ground, getting buried in the ever-falling snow, making the possibility of mending the break less and less feasible. The other branches are quivering, trying to redistribute the weight.

Please know that I never wanted our family to lose a limb, and if it were only a matter of my love for you, I’d have already fixed it. However, it is not only about my feelings as your mother. In the past, your unpredictability, your severe mood swings, the rage that allowed you to knock holes into once solid walls, the poison you not only put into your own body but brought home to the place your very young niece and nephew live, the attack on your sister, the stealing, the lies, the emotional manipulation, the verbal attacks… These things did not only affect Ryan and me.

I have two other children I need to love and protect, as well as two small grandchildren. How am I supposed to do all of these things? Where does the priority go? How do I make that decision?

Wilson just limped down the hallway to see what I’m up to. He can no longer hop into my lap on his own, so I lift him. I am so devastated about his diagnosis. I get that thirteen years is a decent run for a Boston Terrier, but cancer just seems particularly cruel. I guess nature doesn’t really care much about a loved one’s feelings about such things?

This brings me back to how to make this unfathomable, impossible decision… nature. Just as the tree, upon losing a major branch, would then figure out a way to redistribute the weight of the continuously falling snow. It would not simply fall over and risk dying.

As impossible as it seems, it would continue to find a way to heal from its wound and even manage to allow new branches to eventually sprout. At the same time, though the branch will likely have to accept its new position and circumstance, after a while, the snow that caused the branch to snap off will melt and soak into the soil, enriching it.

Do you remember the flowers I would plant and sometimes pinch a piece off of and plunk it into its own pot, and not even a year later, it would have developed into its own strong and equally beautiful plant? That happens in nature with all kinds of plant life– even trees. The broken piece acts as a seed itself and takes root, helped along by the water from the very snow that caused its catastrophic break.

It may take years, but eventually, another tree stands tall, far stronger than the branch itself ever was. It then becomes one of many trees in the forest that is Life. My answer to your question regarding parole is not a punishment. I don’t know that you can see it now, but my fervent hope is that one day you will understand that just as I nurtured those plant cuttings and gave them the time and space to develop their own root systems, I have great trust in your ability to grow independently.

Gavin, for many reasons, I cannot be the soil that holds you up anymore, but I can hope that the lessons we’ve learned throughout all of this, like the nutrients in the melting snow, will help you establish your own solid foundation.

I love you, and I hope one day you understand why I have come to this conclusion. The distance between us, like the space between two trees in a forest, isn't just about protection - both of us must be able to reach toward the light in our own ways.

I love you, Son!

Always and Forever,

Mom