Sixteen years ago, I sat down in an airless cabin on a sailboat in Sag Harbor with paper and pen to escape spending time with a husband I did not love. Why am I telling you this? Because, my dear son, perhaps by saying it out loud—that I did not love him—I can help make sense of why you are where you are now.
Right now you are on the eighth floor of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. The eighth floor is that floor. For the despondent, for the likes of Virginia Woolf. It’s the floor where at 3:45 p.m. an amoeba of strangers pulsates, waiting for the doors to open. We make glassy-sad-terror eye contact, appropriate for those unsure of who we’ll see once we get to our loved ones’ rooms. On the hour, the orderly lets us in, two visitors at a time. Some come with snacks. I did not know to do this on the first day. Now I come with gummy bears, per your instructions.
It’s the floor where you sit in your yellow hospital gown, handwriting homework assignments that you insist I email to your professors three thousand miles away. Where you pace back and forth like a caged panther. Occasionally you wear the gown without the barrier of the long-sleeved shirts I bring you, and I can see the tattoo on your left forearm. The Jerusalem cross. I gasped the first time I saw it when I picked you up at the airport last month, flashing defiantly at me, bringing the message of God to this corner of the world. I said nothing. This is what mothers do when we do not know how to mother: we stuff our words down into our bellies. Many women my age complain of bloat, but really it’s a condition of parenting without a manual.
