BECOMING

Last night I was talking to a friend about the mutual challenges we have faced as parents of children who suffered clinical Oppositional Defiance Disorder in their early years. It is difficult to understand the hell one finds oneself in when faced with such a child unless you have actually lived through it, especially when, to look at them, they are the proverbial wolves in sheep's clothing. There was rarely a night through those intense years that I did not cry myself to sleep and regret all the things that I had not handled as well as I should have. And in one of those low, low moments I did what I do when I need to cope. I wrote a poem for him.

The Color of My Own

Through the dusk I call to you,

watch you turn and hold up a hand –

just one more minute.

I see you now, straddling the divide

between child and youth,

spurs on your heels propelling you

from childhood with all the agony

of a first love,

striding quickly away from the little boy

that nursed so eagerly in my arms…

has it been so long ago, now?

I watch, powerless,

as you cling tenuously with knuckle-white grasp

to the bucking bronco that is your childhood

as it seeks to loose you at every turn,

the ride tumultuous and long.

Anger comes swift as a hawk from the sky,

plucking you up in its steely talons,

and you give yourself up to it with abandon.

Words fly between us like so many knives

and the tears that come afterwards, tinged

with the blood of our hurts.

As you throw your arms around my waist,

head resting beneath my chin,

the bumps of our journey steal my breath

and regret burns like acid in my throat

as I wish for the impossible –

just another chance to say something different,

to do it again, right, this time.

You glance up at me,

so fearless and sure.

I am at once envious and maddened

by your defiance.

In the dying light

I see the child I never was in your eyes,

the color of my own.

- Carrie Black

May 2006

And this child, whom I hoped would simply make it to adulthood without committing some heinous crime, dressed last week for the first time in his Jr. ROTC uniform and headed off to high school (and no, I did NOT force him to sign up for it, believe it or not), and I see him becoming all of those things that I only dreamed he could be.