The Joey Song. Sandra Swenson

but they do not choose to lose. Something else does the choosing when a user becomes an addict.

      When I was in high school and college, I partied a lot. I slugged down more Boone’s Farm and Schlitz and peach schnapps than I care to admit. I never gave a thought to the risk. Not once. If I had, I would’ve thought addiction only happened to other people. Seriously flawed and weak people. I didn’t know the fun I was having was fun by pure luck. I didn’t know there were others in the family who would be taken down by the drink. I didn’t know that when I chose to drink, the drink could just as easily have chosen me.

      Everyone I know eats donuts and cookies and candy-store sweets. Some, but not all, become diabetic or are haunted by visions of sugarplums or land on the scale between chubby and obese. Is slow-torture-by-donut a choice? What makes someone susceptible to heart disease or multiple sclerosis? What makes someone good at math, or stink at drawing, or hate the taste of anchovies, or favor the color blue? What makes one shy, one gregarious, or one like toy cars more than teddy bears before the age of two? I think we’re born with a mix of ingredients and there are some things about which we have no choice.

      So, what turns a user into an addict? I don’t know, but I’m sitting here in the dark, hiding from my nineteen-year-old son who is one. Some inner turmoil may have drawn Joey to experiment with drugs and drink, but his inner turmoil did not make him an addict. Something else did.

      Morning is here. And so is Joey. Bleary-eyed and subdued, he says he’s ready to go to the airport and has a bulging suitcase to prove it. He will be flying alone; Joey needs to feel he’s going to addiction treatment rather than being taken. If disaster is averted over the next several hours, it will probably be simply because we’ve made sure he has no money.

      I should feel happy this morning now that there’s a glimmer of light at the end of Joey’s tunnel. Instead, I have mixed feelings. Much, I suppose, like a mother learning of a new treatment option for her child’s rapidly spreading cancer.

      It may be good news, but only relatively speaking.

Verse Four

       SOMETHING CRAZY-BAD

      Like mamas everywhere, I discovered the power of the bond created during pregnancy—that intimate nine-month love affair between two souls. A phantom connection, unaffected by the passage of years or a long stretch of miles, mysteriously wanders the invisible world, searching for tears and for fears and for when things are not quite right, and then relays that information back to home base. I can read a full day’s story on the faces of my children without a word passing between us. I’ve awakened in the night, waiting for the groggy call that floats my way moments later. And I can tell when one of my boys is smiling just by looking at the back of his head. The force of this bond sends moms of all species into dive-bombs or snarling rages to protect their young, and into frenzied action or keening grief for a cub gone missing.

      I’ve been surprised over and over by the power of this stuff of motherhood. It bloomed from some unknown place deep within me, literally overnight, and is virtually indestructible.

      But sometimes I don’t want it, because it hurts too much.

      The house grows quiet once Joe and Joey leave for the airport and Rick leaves for school. I pull on my jacket and step outside, bracing myself against the freezing-cold air. For once in my life I’m wishing for snow;

      I wish there were tracks to help me find the bongs Joey hid out here last night. I wander the crunchy lawn without direction. Picking up a stick, I poke at the rotted center of an old tree stump and around the fence posts. On my knees, I burrow into a tangle of twiggy honeysuckle legs, raking my gloved fingers through frosty brown leaves. I don’t find what I’m looking for, but do see a scattering of empty bottles a short toss into the neighbor’s yard; some of last night’s racket was probably Joey scuttling out the door with even more things that needed to be erased in the darkness.

      Returning to the house, I hang my jacket on the hook by the back door and survey the scraps of Joey’s life abandoned in the haste of his retreat. Stepping through the ruins, I pick up pieces here and there, trying to consolidate the mess disgorged across our home without looking too closely, but the scraps of Joey’s life and dreams bring me to my knees. To my knees.