First there was the baggie of pot crumbs and small heavy pipe in the pocket of his winter jacket in December.
"This is your last chance. One more and you've got to leave."
Then it was the pot he got in February and smoked with underclassman girls, skipping out of school (again) and taking them away in a rarely granted car. He left mid-schoolday to do it and was expelled from high school four months before graduation making his start in the fall at presitgious UW very doubtul.
"This is your last chance, really, I mean it. Once more and you're out of here."
Thursday was the planning meeting for his readmittance to high school, an opportunity to reclaim the gift the school gave him of the possibility of doing what he said he wanted. Much beggng, bowing and scraping by his aunt, who doesn't l ike the beg and the bow and the scrape.
Thursday was also writing out and delivering the check to the Addiction Resource Council for the course of rehab services the nephew is required to complete. Auntie will drive him there, retrieve him after each of four 3 and a half hour sessions, and is the only one who seems to realize that this may not be convenient or enjoyable for her and that she forbade the act that landed this into her life;
Saturday was the sitting waiting three hours out at the nature area while he cleared trails, to start piling up the community service hours he needs to get back into school. Auntie had cancelled her other plans for the afternoon, but made the best of the wait with coffee, music, and drawing.
Saturday late afternoon was the ticket for underage drinking, written to him after he shared a bottle of brandy with someone he really didn't know at a house his aunt had advised him not to visit anymore. The police picked the drinkers up at McDonalds and went back to the house to breathalize all the other teenagers there. They tested his cousin GothBoy, too. GothBoy a.k.a. Parker may look scary and act stupid, but he hadn't had any alcohol at all. The nephew was brought back here by the police.
"This is it. If there is a next time you are out."
And then a near sleepless night, which didn't do anything constructive. Luckily I did get some sleep and that's when wisdom rose to my awareness. When I woke up this morning, these were my new thoughts:
- Repeated "this is your last chance"'s were teaching him that he could risk chancey behaviors. I could be enabling behaviors that I don't want him to engage in:
- The cluelessness that he displays and which confuses and angers me may be real. His life with an addict mother who knew how to get off of every rational hook she got snagged on could have taught him that nothing really has irreversible consequences. The expulsion, the meetings, the tickets, the court appearances never seemed to faze him enough. I was the one whose nerves jangled from them;.
- He has an intellectual grasp of the arguements against drinking and drugs, but may not have the personal tools or developed character to know how to act in accordance with his intellectual understanding;
- The many times I say "I don't know what to do" to myself and to others should be listened to--by me. It's true. I don't know. It's time to get advice from more experienced people and to consider other things--a different placement for the nephew, one where the guardian is better equipped to look after him and less auntly and more tough on him. Maybe landing hard outside my house on his young behind would jar into him the knowledge that you can lose what you're quite sure you have. If you don't take care of it, you can lose the life you like having.
Through all of these things I've been absolutely clear that I'm angry with him and just as clear that I love him. I have told him that people can be angry with you, but it doesn't mean that they stop loving you and it doesn't mean that they throw you out or throw you away.
This morning I refined that message. I told the young man who seems strangely immune to accepting that his behavior affects his situation that because I haven't been able to teach him to make smart choices, it may be time for someone else to try to do that. I told him to figure out what he wants, as I have told him to do those other times. I told him that until the meeting we'd already had set up with his placement caseworker is over tomorrow, I can't tell him where he will be or what his situation will be. I told him that I love him and that if I believed it woud serve him best to protect him from new problematic consequences with social services, school, the university admissions department, and everyone, I'd do it. But I don't believe that's best. I believe it's best for him to continue to learn that actions have consequences and maybe to hit bottom when it's not such a long fall and when his efforts to get back up will get him hands eager to help him to his feet again.
As far as Auntie's life as not-parent or guardian, she enjoyed an early morning out sketching wherever she felt like being. The day's Worldwide Sketchcrawl lived up to any expectations I had about how enjoyable it would be. My sketches didn't quite live up to my dreams of them, but I'd already decided to go for quality time and to relax about the quality of the drawings.
Auntie can be a wise babe some of the time, anyway.
'Punky Brewster' gives birth to baby
