A poem, a plunger, and my epic struggle to reconnect with our youngest child after the ravages of addiction
I first heard the poem back in 2006. It was read aloud on the radio by a famous performer who has since lost favor in the eyes of the literati, so he shall remain nameless. I was struck by the simplicity of it at the time. The vivid detail and the raw emotion commanded you to stop and listen. It reminded me of how often we get caught up in what’s practical. We forget to allow for a little joy.
It was to become a difficult time for our family. We didn’t know it then, but our youngest child was already starting to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol to deal with what he felt was an incongruous existence. Ricky was only fourteen but had been a difficult student since he entered the second grade. He was a happy kid otherwise, but the odd constraints of school did not sit well with his undiagnosed place on the spectrum. Oh, sure, he was ADHD, but wasn’t everyone? He had an IEP and a 504 and had all manner of special designations, but mostly, he hated school because it made him feel stupid, and he was anything but.
We saw specialists and had countless meetings with his “team.” None of it seemed to make any difference. Eventually, the weed and booze turned to pills, and when the Oxycontin became cost-prohibitive, he turned to heroin. It would be many years before he fully returned to us. Lots of sleepless nights — crying, screaming, and pleading.
They tell first-time parents of addicts that until you have given your child up for dead, you have no way of helping them. That’s not exactly how they say it, but it’s pretty close. Addicts have three options, they tell us. Get clean, become institutionalized, or die. There are no other options, including us trying to help them. They have to want to get clean, and there is nothing we are ever going to do to change that. The longer we allow them to push off the inevitable, the more likely they are to end up dead, in jail, or in a mental institution.
In truth, the biggest obstacle to most addicts getting clean is the misdirected love of family and friends that just keeps the whole thing going. You have to cut them off from everything, including your love, so that they hit rock bottom. Death is a real possibility, as is prison or a mental institution. You have to give them up for lost. Only then are they capable of coming back to you. It’s an impossible position to be in, especially for a parent of a child.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There was this poem.
Bear with me
I want to tell you
something about
happiness
it’s hard to get at
but the thing is
I wasn’t looking
I was looking
somewhere else
when my son found it
in the fruit section
and came running
holding it out
in his small hands
asking me what
it was and could we
keep it only
cost 99 cents
hairy and brown
hard as a rock
and something swishing
around inside
and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness
this little ball
of interest beating
inside his chest
this interestedness
beaming out
from his face pleading
happiness
and because I wasn’t
happy I said
to put it back
because I didn’t want it
because we didn’t need it
and because he was happy
he started to cry
right there in aisle
five so when we
got home we
put it in the middle
of the kitchen table
and sat on either
side of it and began
to consider how
to get inside of it
— Paul Hostovsky (From the poem Coconut)
They were in Home Depot. My wife Jane, our oldest daughter Jessica, and Ricky. No one seems to remember why they were there, but at one point, while walking down the plumbing aisle — no doubt just crossing through — they came upon the toilet plungers. Ricky was maybe ten at the time. Something struck him funny, and he picked up a small plunger, almost toy-sized, and began putting it against his stomach, then his head and face. He began impersonating Jim Carrey, fighting the plunger for control.
“Can I get this?” Ricky asked.
It cost less than $3. Jane agreed, and they finished shopping, Ricky amusing himself with his plunger the whole time. Later, in the car, Ricky asked if they could stop for ice cream, and without thinking, Jane said, “Come on, Ricky. It’s never enough. I just bought you a plunger!”
She was dead serious until everyone in the car laughed, including Jane, and then they went for ice cream.
Jane told me the story that evening when I got home from work, and we all had a good laugh. Ricky was on hand somewhere to demonstrate his new plunger skills. Years later, I would hear that poem and remember that story, and I would put the two of them together and write a short bit about it.
I liked the connection, but as I was looking at it from my point of view, I had identified with the parent, reluctant to indulge a child’s curiosity because it seemed frivolous and pointless. It was just a simple anecdote to go along with a cute poem. Remember to take a little time for the small joys in life.
At the time, I wrote, “We still have that plunger, no doubt tucked away with the rest of Ricky’s toys, in the attic, as he is now too old to play with them. But it always reminds me to think about my answer before I give it. I would have said no to the plunger. Because I didn’t want it. Because we didn’t need it. And because, most likely, I wasn’t happy.”
I thought that was the end of the story, but thinking back on it, I realize that I may have missed the larger point. It wasn’t about me learning to relax or appreciate small moments. It was about my boy’s endless quest for the thing that had remained elusive to him. The ball of interest beating inside his chest.
A lot of people will tell you that addiction is often just a symptom of larger issues at play. While it’s true that some people are just more susceptible to the dangers of abusing mind-altering substances, those who overindulge almost always have underlying issues that aren’t being dealt with. Alcohol and drugs are simply substitutes for well-balanced mental health. If you drink or take drugs to “feel normal,” eventually, you will need more and more, and you’ll die chasing that original feeling of life without anxiety.
Ricky has been sober for over a decade, and to hear him tell it, the old desires to escape in that way are gone. Those feelings are foreign to him now, remnants of a childhood nightmare whose memory is beginning to fade. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still struggle to find balance in his life. He just realizes that drugs and alcohol are not the answer for him.
Ricky often says that he feels like a black cloud is constantly hanging over him and that nothing works out for him. In reality, he’s incredibly lucky in so many ways, many of which he doesn’t even see, but his struggle is real. His life has been one long stretch of two steps forward and one step back. He would tell you that he doesn’t require much. Safety, security, love, and a little joy. He wants to start a family, but so far, that hasn’t worked out. Not for lack of willing would-be suitors, I might add.
Like the rest of us, Ricky is simply trying to find his place in the world. He is cursed with an artist’s mind trying to get by in a working-class environment. He’s too intelligent for his own good, but he never had any interest in advanced studies, so many avenues are closed to him. The things he enjoys most, such as music and art, simply don’t pay the bills in the way he would require, so he’s forced to do things he might not be temperamentally suited for.
I might argue that anyone who is smart and creative feels this way, but most of us have figured out ways to work around the system so that we are not miserable. Either because of past trauma or because of the way his brain is wired, Ricky struggles in areas that most people don’t even think about. The fact that he’s as intelligent as he is only makes it worse.
Ricky and I have had a complicated relationship at times. In some ways, maybe not more than your average stepfather and stepson, but there’s a disconnect there that neither of us can quite bridge. Some of it has to do with our individual personalities, some of it has to do with each of our shortcomings, and some of it is just life.
I hope that will change as we both grow older. Even though we don’t share any genetic material, we are very similar in many ways. We often used to joke that he and I were more alike than he and his biological father. Ricky is funny, creative, and cynical, but with a tender heart and an empathetic spirit. He has the gift of discernment and does not suffer fools lightly. He is like me in so many ways, and I like him.
One could argue that Ricky is very much his stepfather’s son. But the fact remains, we do not share that bond. He is not my son, and I am not his father. I have been a parent to him since he was four years old, but I will never replace his father, nor should I. This creates its own separation because he gets to choose when he wants to treat me as a friend, a parent, or just his mother’s husband. I have been all three at various times.
His father, who has since passed on, was a complicated man who struggled with his own lack of happiness in life. Sometimes, you can only escape just so much of your family history, and try as he might, I think Ricky suffers from being too much like his father. He also struggles with being too much like me.
In the movie Platoon, the character of Chris, played by Charlie Sheen, is trying to reconcile his time in the Vietnam War.
“The war is over for me now,” he says, “but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I’m sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called ‘possession of my soul.’ There are times since, I’ve felt like a child, born of those two fathers.”
I imagine that’s a bit of what it’s like for Ricky some days. The child of two fathers, each fighting for his soul. I think that, in many ways, I have become the embodiment of the failures he saw in both his father and me. But now that his father is gone, I’m all he has left, from that perspective, and it’s simply not enough. I can’t make him happy any more than his father could, just as neither of us could force him to get clean. He had to do it on his own. We couldn’t do it for him.
The same goes for happiness. The problem is that the search for happiness is a solitary journey. We are not meant to end up alone, but no one can make us happy if we can’t find that joy ourselves. Searching for it in other people will only leave you empty and disappointed. You have to find it inside.
Which is why I’m still hopeful that one of these days, we will find that elusive coconut, possibly together. We will put it on the kitchen table, sit across from one another, and figure out how to get inside of it.
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