The DesertLight Journal

LETTERS TO MY SON I. Goodbye. Dear Son, Great news! Today, for the first time in two years, I experienced a moment of joy. A heavy rainstorm had finally subsided after pounding the city I live in for three days straight. I live here with my new wife, in another country. It came without any advance heraldry late in the afternoon. Light poked through the junipers, redwoods, and oak. The shafts reminded me of long slender fingers. Your fingers. I felt Spring's imminent arrival. That's it. But all the same, I know a miracle when it happens, and my heart raced. I had never remotely expected to feel joy again. A little girl who was around eighteen months old was playing in the front yard of her house, runningwell, stumblingtoward a waterlogged and half-deflated old Soccer ball. I happened to be driving by. She was dressed for speed, this one. She was not aerodynamically flawless, perhaps, but she was admirably devoted to the challenge, with one sock on and a suspiciously rounded diaper. Her belly jounced as she wobbled downfield. She possessed a style all her own. She had thrust her head forward, and she toppled now toward gravity and the ball, gaining speed with each stride. It was hard to be sure which she would land upon firstthe ball, or the lawn. Her pudgy legs stamped away like pistons. They had to work like hell just to keep up with the rest of her. And it was close, but she prevailed and remained on her feet.  She ploughed into the ball and stopped, her hands on her hips, with a look of triumph. No audience was there to applaud, but I smiled and gave her a silent enthusiastic ovation. Also, softly, I addressed a certain cosmic entity I know, one with whom I've had a severe falling out. I whispered, "Thank you." I had refused until today to utter a word to him. I first turned away from him in disgust two years ago, on the day that your mother and a bevy of lawyers in three thousand dollar suits tore you away from me forever. Nor had I seen any reason to reconsider the matter before now. Today was precious because I realized, to my own astonishment, that I still have more love in me than I do numbness and hate. Quietly, I drove on. The experience also caused me to grow wistful. Seeing her, of course, did remind me of you at that age. Memories flickered in and out of my mind. Then, one stuck. *** It's Saturday morning, 1981. We're in Golden Gate Park at the Aquarium, "looking at the fishes," as you used to say. You're three years old. I've hoisted you up onto my shoulders and now clasp your ankles tightly in my hands. I feel your fingers in my scalp. You used to like to run your hands through my hair. We went to Golden Gate Park almost every Saturday back then. Afterwards, we'd go to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, for "noodles," as we called it. I'd feed you with my chopsticks. Then, we'd take the N-Judah trolley home, and I'd put you down for a nap. *** Well-intentioned people often say to me these days, "You'll always have your memories to cherish." And I know that they mean well. Still, memory slashes through me like a blade. Even worse, once the knife has pierced me, I then feel compelled to clamp my hands around the handle and refuse to pull the knife out. Memory has not been anything of late here to cherish. But today was not just melancholy. As I said, I also experienced joy. It surprised me enough that I asked myselfwhy now? The answer ached. I'm loosening my fingers from the knife handle now. I'm letting go. I finally grasp how hopeless it really is. I will never see you again, son. I'm almost certain. SoI let go of the knife today, and I let go of you. Instantly, I plummeted down an elevator shaft that seemed to descend forever.  But the funny thing iseven abysses have bottoms. I found myself sitting on a mound of greasy cables and dank earth. My ass hurt like hell, too, but I was alive. In the distance, I saw a shimmering light and could just discern a door. I sat where I'd landed for a while, refusing to budge, but finally I rose, walked to the door, opened it, and shut it behind me. I now found myself surrounded by pedestrians in the congestion of a nameless city. I allowed the crowd to carry me along.  I peered into storefronts, and even wanted a couple of the items that I saw. Buddha has warned us, of course, about the perils of desire, but I found this development encouraging. I've not had many appetites recently. I waited for red lights with everyone else. I was alive again. But what a terrible price I'd had to pay to get here. My sweet, beloved, brave sonhow deeply I wish you could have been here too. I miss you so much. But I know now that it will never happen. Two years ago, when a bored judge clacked down his gavel and severed me from you forever, time stopped. He was an arrogant sonofabitch, too. You were weeping and unable to look at me. I had been dragged into court handcuffed and manacled to a chain. Yet all he could say was, "Speak up, son, you need to say it louder." The prick. I suspect he was thinking mostly about lunch, perhaps trying to decide between a corned beef on rye at the deli, versus Chinese food. The tragedy that destroyed me required less than five minutes to effect. I was marched back to jail then and shoved into a cell. I would never talk to you again, hear your voice, or be able to touch you even one last time. 11:43 AM. Friday. August 31 2000. Time ceased to exist for me. Everyone chooses his own metaphor for living death. For me, it is a desert, and for two years, I've wandered in one.  Nothing meant anything anymore. I trudged up one dune and beheld ten thousand more. I cursed God for allowing this to happen, and then cursed him even more bitterly for forcing me to stay alive. I trudged on. The monotony was broken occasionally solely by a taunting mirage. Every so often, I stumbled not upon an oasis, butof all thingsa phone booth. The booth would show up unpredictablyold-fashioned, with a roof and accordion-hinged glass door. For some reason, it always jutted out at some preposterous angle, doors ajar and off their hinges. It looked like a dead gaping mouth. The phone would be ringing, even though the receiver was off the hook, a cyanotic tongue. The symbolism no doubt is clear to you, so let me reassure youI doubt that I'll hang myself. I don't intend to die. But if I did decide someday to do myself in, I lean more toward carbon monoxide or a gun. At times of crisis, I always become hyper-logical. Back to my living hell: The phone rings incessantly. Finally I mutter and wade through the ankle deep sand. I pick up the receiver. "We have a collect call for you, Dr. Reiser," the operator says. "From your son. Will you accept the charges?" "Of course," I say. "That will be one trillion dollars and thirty-six cents," the operator says. "For the first three minutes." "Not a problem," I say. "This isn't just anyone. This is my son I grab my wallet and rifle through the credit cards. The cards are different, but the expiration date is always identical. I'll bet you can guess. "Do you prefer Visa or MasterCard?" I ask her. She says, "I'm sorry, sir, we only accept the Styx card." "The what card?" I say. "I've never heard of it." Then, I hear your voice. "Dad!" you're calling. "Dad! I need to talk to you! I need you back." The line goes dead. This is not a dream, son. This is my attempt, through metaphor, to capture how I have felt for the last two years when I am awake. Dreams, like sleep, usually elude me. Maybe you're not in a Salvador Dali frame of mind, however. So, here's a glimpse of what has been everyday reality: For the last two years, whenever the phone has rung in my apartment, I've thought, "Maybe that's him." Of course, it never is. *** Condemned prisoners are frequently granted permission to visit their loved ones when they are dying. What, then, was the act of villainy that I committed, which deprived me of any opportunity to see you ever again? My crime was disagreeing in court during a divorce about the distribution of money. This is what your mother's wrath was fundamentally about, and ultimately you will come to see this. I wish you never had to. She sacrificed your need for the love of two parents over twenty or thirty thousand dollars give or take. Additionally, hate-mongers glommed onto her at a time of great turmoil, and egged her on to make this payback time, BIG. Until I gained some perspective, I could not understand how such a thing was possiblenot so much what your mother did to me as what she did to you. I was a lousy husband in many ways. I always understood your mother's wrath toward me. But she had always been absolutely dedicated to your well being. For her to screw with a sick kid's mind in order to separate him from his father, a father whom he adored? For a few bucks? It just didn't add up. I felt then that your mother was better than that. I still do. Yet, what she was doing to you was like something lifted from the plotline for Medea.  Gradually, I came to understand. This, too, was all about money. And vengeance. But the motivation did not arise from your mother alone. Two groups of people descended on her in those first dayslawyers and so-called "neofeminists."  Some divorce lawyers, I came to understand, have turned human misery into a cottage industry. Restraining orders, pushing the envelope of perjury, alienating children from their parents foreverthese are not nightmare scenes from some Orwellian horror story. They're just standard operating procedure for these jackals. The neofeminists are more complicated. I don't want to get into it, really. Basically, I regard them as exceptionally disturbed people who hate themselves. The problem is that they are bankrolled with taxpayer money. Prosecutors "hire" them as "Victim's Assistance" counsellors and depend on them to prod someone facing, very possibly, the most agonizing decision of her life in a certain direction. They cajole, flatter, and incense her to choose vengeance over forgiveness, and hatred over love. The prosecutor's motivation? That's a no-brainer. For an ambitious prosecutor, professional success comes down to the number of pelts he has nailed to the wall. The prosecutor's office, as a governmentally funded institution, knows as well that pelts translate to dollars. Really, the whole thing is no more complicated than that. I am angry with your mother. I hold her responsible, above all other things, for harming you. But there are, as the lawyers are fond of saying, extenuating circumstances. The reality is thisrage, hurt, and confusion overwhelm everyone in the midst of a divorce. Ultimately, I think, the real atrocity is the way these two groups exploit a person's vulnerability at a time of suffering. And the venality (read: lawyers) and sniper-fire cowardice and sadism (neofeminists) with which they do it. This is going too far. Sothe significance of today, my sweet handsome young man, actually is momentous. I'm walking through a door that opens only one way, and I honestly can't tell you whether renewed hope eclipses my grief, or it is the other way around. I'm cancelling my phone service, son. For good. In fact, I've insisted that they send in backhoes to yank up the cables. If I'm in the desert and I come to a booth, and the phone is ringing, I will not pick it up. I have given up. I've had to, if I want to survive. *** I am having a bona fide memory now. This happened. It's not a metaphor. I experience it as the black taped handle of a stiletto. God the Gangster has just plunged another one of his toys into my heart and rammed it up to the hilt. You are seventeen. It's graduation night at the exclusive private school that your mother and I have sent you to for eight years. The affair is outdoors and the vast manicured lawns all glint in the dark like emeralds. You are hearing voices. They laugh at you, call you a chickenshit, and order you to kill yourself. Doctors first diagnosed the problem officially when you were fourteen, but we had known all along what was wrong. Deep down, we'd known it since you were six.  Bipolar illness. Not the "good" kind, where only twenty to twenty-five percent kill themselves. Your form is uncommon and incalculably worse. Tonight, we've taken you to the ceremony directly from a psychiatric ward. You had to sign six "contracts" with the staff promising not to kill yourself before they'd even unlatch the door. We fought to get you here tonight because we knew that this ritual was very important to you. The night, however, is not going well at all. All evening, your classmates have shunned you. It's been two hours since they handed out the diplomas and, since then, you've milled about, feigning confidence but inwardly feeling your hopes wither. You scan the night frantically, searching for a single friendly companion. No one speaks to you. No student. No teacher. No one. You stand awkwardly with us for five or ten minutes, grow self-conscious, and then venture forth again, wandering alone on the lawn, hoping that one of the closed circles will take pity and let you in. Kids huddle together, laughing, planning impromptu get-togethers, and sharing memories. But they all keep their backs turned. That night, you will not be invited to a single party. I watch you stand around by yourself, hands in your pockets, frightened and forlorn. You are a ghost in a sculpture garden, one comprised of shiny black obelisks, students in their gowns, who have all turned away from you. These abstract sculptures have been assembled for a special, one-night-only exhibit entitled "Cruelty." The sculptures are people who you once believed were your friends. They look regal when the breeze comes up and rustles the black silk of their gowns. The best and the finest. But, already, at the age of seventeen, they are callous and hard, polished and cold. Finally, you turn away. Defeated. You ask us to take you back to the hospital. There is, in fact, a snapshot from that night. I don't have it, or any other family picture for that matter. But I remember it. You are sitting alone on a stone wall, dangling your feet. A hill slopes up behind you and disintegrates into the night. The wall is empty except for you. A hundred feet of vacant concrete glimmers in the moonlight. The expression on your face? Obliterated. Emotionally demolished. I remember my thoughts when that shot was taken. I kept thinking, "Why? My son is a living soul. A living soul. A beautiful spirit. The most precious person to me on the face of the earth. Why?" And I remember struggling to find comfort somewhere in this atrocity, piled atop of so many others that you did not deserve and suffered with such deep courage and goodness, son. In the end, I clung onto three thoughts: 1.          At least you have your mother and me. 2.          At least you derive solace and courage from the love we have for you, and for each other. We're still a family. Together. 3.          At least you know that, regardless of whatever may come, your mother and I will always be united in our single-minded dedication to you. Time proved me wrong. Four years later, your mother set out not to leave me, but to destroy me. She hid money in secret accounts, committed perjury, and hired lawyers who knew how to use restraining orders the way Zorro swings a sword. She had me thrown in jail on false charges. I'd never even been arrested before. The cops beat me in the squad car on the way to the jail. Your mother (I suspect with some explicit tutelage from her lawyers) overwhelmed you with the same kinds of mind control techniques used so effectively by cults. Above all, these cults target someone who is fragile and terrified and force him to "choose" which side he is on. I can think of no one more ruthlessly done-in by this kind of pressure than you, just inching toward recovery from two years of severe illness and now confronting the disintegration of a relationship between the two people whom you needed the most. Whether your mother did this almost unconsciously, and without any coaching, or deliberately, I have no way of knowing. Yet, I think that she was also a sitting duck for the craven cowards who inflict such damage on human beings, whether it is for a heftier fee or gratification of blind hatred. All I can say with certainty is that as time has passed, the situation has grown ever bleaker. Any positive memory you once had of me has clearly now been destroyed. What a terrible toll! What was excruciating for me was that I was absolutely helpless to do a thing about it. Had I so much as phoned you, or sent you a card, I would have been sent to prison. I had struggled fiercely to get you to the very best care that year, to spare you the suffering that comes with your illness, only now to witness you suffer once again, needlessly. And I ask myselfwhat is left of us now? I am not allowed to have any contact with you for the remainder of my life. After two years of a meticulously executed and relentless denigration of me, I suspect that you actually believe we never loved each other. That you are convinced that you hate me. When you were seventeen and in terrible pain, I asked myself"What does my son still have?" I came up with three sentences. I ask myself that same question today, but find that I am answered only by the wind. And for two years, I've fought the arrival of this moment today. First, I fought the judges in courtrooms; I fought the "feminist" psychotherapists; I fought the attorneysamazingly, not only your mother's, but my own. I fought against my own hatred. All I ever wanted was a chance to see you one more time. Just once. When even that failed, I begged the judges in courtrooms; begged the "feminist' psychotherapists; begged the attorneysI even begged your mother. This, too, failed. I simply cannot fight any longer. I have no choice, son, if I hope to live. For you see, after two years of this, I have lost my health. I have aged. I have three diseases that could kill me. At night, I have lain awake passing the time by inventing new methods of suicide. This does neither of us any good. After all you have had to suffer, at least I can spare you from even more. I can live. News of my death, especially by my own hand, would reach you. And, in spite of what you may believe consciously, I know that in the depths of you, this would devastate you. And I want you to be crystal clear---although I have given up hope of having you in my own life I will never, ever give up my faith in you. I will love you always. I wonderedwhat would happen if you somehow came to read this? I think it unlikely, but I did need to ask myself. Truthfully, I suspect that it is now too late for it to make any impression on you for good or ill. I see this all in images. Someone prints it out in hard copy and hands it to you. I do not see your fingers so much as twitch. The pages flutter to the groundhandkerchiefs, waving goodbye. And yet, even though you will doubtless never read this, I still need to say it: I am very, very proud of you, son. The proudest I have ever been was during the period between 1998 and 2000. Although these were terribly dark years for you, the courage you displayed, your lack of self-pity, and your repeated willingness to struggle back to your feet were dazzling. They awed me and humbled me. I have never known anyone braver. Also, son, I beg of youwhen you awaken to the truth, and experts in what your mother has done predict that you willplease forgive her. These experts, to whom I have turned for guidance, tell me that often this happens when a young person reaches his mid-twenties. And they have warned me that the disillusionment can sometimes be too devastating to bear. Please, never hate your mother. Ever. She gave you life. She loved you when she and I were together. And now, although as I see it, her judgment about what is best for you has grown increasingly poor, she loves you still. I repeat--she is misguided. She is not bad. Your mother was not perfect, and I was not perfect. But we both love you deeply. Please note my use of the present tense. I am convinced that she loves you every bit as much as I do. Something just went terribly wrong. Forgive her. All of us have suffered enough. I will probably never know what you do from this point forward. But I will always think of you, and pray for you. And I will always know that, whatever path you take, it will be one that would have made me very, very proud. You will always be the greatest gift of my lifeand I was privileged to see you grow into a beautiful person for twenty years. I love you. Which, come to think of it, reminds meas soon as I finish this piece, there's a certain cosmic entity I need to apologize to. *** August 5. 1977. General Rose Hospital. Denver, Colorado. I behold the towering miracle of my life. You are coming into the world. I am the first to greet you. Watching you emerge is not so much joyous as it is terrifying.  Like most babies, you come out headfirst and face first. God, I thinkhow blue babies really get before taking that first breath. The obstetrician cradles your limp, uncomprehending head. Your eyelids are sealed shut. Then, of course, right on schedule, your first incredible gasp. Your eyes open, and your ensuing howls of startlement, confusion, and protest are right on schedule. *** Twenty-three years later, I can express some sympathy for the shock it must have felt like for you. One way or another, life ends up being a bitch for all of us, and I'm sure it commences with our getting kicked out of that safety, darkness, and peace. But, at the time, the more you carried on, the happier it made me. Every gasp of indignation pinkened you right up. *** I hold you. I am dumbfounded with ecstasy. Slowly, reluctantly, I come to my senses. Your mother lies exhausted, drenched with perspiration. My hero! She has just given you every last drop of her courage and strength. Even now, she is still out of breath. What a gift! Thank you, Mom, and I mean that. In the end, this is the memory I choose to keep of you. I reach back across the chasm of years and once again touch your goodness, sacrifice, and love. And I know that you still possess these things, in abundance. I am so sorry that, in the end, it all got so tangled up and painful. God knows, neither of us wanted it to. But somehow it did. And, then, the horrific conclusionso brutal, so destructive. As is true for our son, I think it unlikely that you will ever read this. But if you did, know this, above all elsewe did our best, you and I. Forget the savagery that tore through all of us at the end. You were very good to me, and a beautiful mother to our son. We are the sum of all of our parts, and there is something that you and I did together that was miraculous and purewe loved this guyand, all in all, we did all right. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of me. I'm proud of us. This is the memory I choose to keepthe one that is closest to the truth. And you, son? You're probably rolling your eyes, I know. You are not a baby. I know that. But try to understand somethingyour mother and I are struggling to find peace after enormous suffering, suffering that, tragically, may prove most devastating of all to you. I believe that we must hold on tenaciously to what was good in all of us, and there was a lot of it. I think we must do this not only to ease our pain, but to honor the truth. Your mother and I love you, son. I conclude with this, admittedly, slightly sappy literary contrivance. I'm a writer, so hell, what do you expect? August 5. 1977. General Rose Hospital. Denver, Colorado. I hold the miracle that is you in my arms. Gently now, I place you in your mother's waiting arms. You guys take good care of each other, OK? Now goodbye, my beloved son. Goodbye.