Christmases in the glass house on the lake were all I remember of the goodness. Even if things were tense and harsh all the time, Christmas brought out the cheer and celebration my mom used to override the negativity. The real spruce was twenty feet tall, filling the entire corner of the picture windows. The two Christmases I remember before the bottom dropped out of my parent’s marriage were like displays of wealth and my mom’s creative gift giving. It was a *HAUL*!
Then it was gone. After my dad was booted it became more somber. The tree was average size. There were no roaring parties, only fear and carols playing over the intercom system.
My sister, years later, jumping off the bridge on Christmas day, put the second black mark on holiday celebrations. I’m just now, forty years later, beginning to loosen my own bah humbug.
When my sister and I both had kids, Christmas took on new significance and found a renewal of the spirit with the joy of children. I could thread the needle between grief and doing the good dad move. I began to believe in Santa Claus for a few years. My sister’s divorce came first, blowing out one half of the Christmas Day presents. My kids were a bit jealous of the double-gift Christmas that their cousins had. Until a few years later when they were asking themselves, the same thing I had asked about my dad, “Why are my cousins getting to spend more time with my dad than we are?” There was no good answer.
Over time, even my kids out grew the magic of Christmas. There is still one cousin who takes hours to unwrap his gifts. “I don’t want it to end,” he would say. My kids were picking up wrapping paper and asking if they could go outside and jump on the trampoline.
Our side of the family, my sister, mom, and me, orchestrated an elaborate Christmas feast. Four kids and three adults should not need such mounds of food and two pies, one pumpkin one pecan. As my sister’s kids got older the competitive present buying relaxed a bit. I guess her ex hasn’t done so well financially. It’s better now that we don’t have to see him. He’s living in an AirStream near Big Bend National Park. The stars are magic out there.
This past Christmas we did the thing. Nana is gone, of course, and my sister and I both brought a significant other. My son struggled to contain his anxious high. Probably Adderall euphoria, he could not stop interrupting. Everyone. It was a bit frightening. I spoke with him privately after the first round of stockings, before we sat down for brunch. No effect. A bit like a few nights ago when we tried to watch a movie together. He never stops talking.
It could be adderall, but I suppose if we believe him, it could be 100% neurodivergent mania. I have experienced both. Whatever is causing his eruption is firing off warning flares in my parent mind. I’m not sure how he’s dealing with his alone time, but when he has proximity to me, he won’t stop chattering. I often ask, “What?” He’s speaking, but not necessarily to me. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m just riffing.” Yes, he is.
It was after that Christmas, last Christmas, that my alarm bells went off. I texted my observations to his mom and her husband. They confirmed the same behavior. “Stressful time,” his mom said.
There was one piece of evidence that she was not sharing. Over Thanksgiving, while taking both kids to DC with her husband, my son’s burner phone was revealed at the TSA security check. Two phones? Everyone saw the second phone. The two adults took no further action. More importantly, didn’t mention it to me. Even as he was spinning up his lightspeed anxiety chatter, they didn’t think to explore for themselves what this second phone could mean. I was not in the loop.
My son was staying with me over Christmas, while my daughter stayed mainly at my girlfriend’s house. I’d have to say, I celebrated a psychological victory with that outcome. But my joy would not last.
He returned to Dallas in late January to begin his final semester at college. Two classes. Electives. Should be a breeze. His mom and her husband were giving fresh ultimatums. He had to get a job while only taking two classes. We all prayed and hoped for the best. My son, however, was experiencing an emotional meltdown. I know the prayer of “let’s just get him through school” but it was contraindicated at this point. Especially if you knew about the second gun. I was still in the dark.
Something happened next.
A shoot-out. A robbery. A drug deal gone bad. I still didn’t have a clear picture of my son’s Dallas dysfunction. The first communication of difficulties came in a text.
“I was just robbed at gunpoint. OMG! I threw the bag of weed on the sidewalk and bolted.”
“Um, why did you have weed?” I asked.
Over the next weeks there would be a lot of different versions of the holdup. In some versions he threw down a bag of weed, in others it was money. In yet others he was packing his loaded Glock in his pants. “I didn’t shoot him because I wasn’t wearing my plates.” That’s bulletproof military vests that carry carbon fiber shields. “I still can’t believe I didn’t shoot him.”
“Well, you’d be in jail right now, so I think you made the right decision.”
The dysfunction needed a justification or rationalization. Now, he really couldn’t do school, he’d been held at gunpoint. He could think of nothing else. In the sparse texts I got over the next few days, he was negotiating with the dean of students about getting a variation on his final degree plan. He would be allowed to finish his two classes remotely. The plan was set. He would return home and live with me. I could feed and house him. Give him positive counsel. And help him manage the nightmare that was beginning to unravel in his mind. More guns. More paranoia. I still didn’t know about the second gun at this point, and his mom kept that detail out of her data points.
My son fled Dallas and reinstalled himself and his weaponry to my music room. He needed a safe and quiet place to complete his last two credits for his computer science degree. The degree that was going to set him free.
At this time, a random FaceTime conversation with my daughter she mentioned the second phone. I was complaining about my son’s paranoia and gun fetish.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, he’s definitely a drug dealer,” she said. His holiday season was over. I was on the warpath to find out what I didn’t really want to know, but suspected. The mindblower, to me, however, is how his mom and her husband did not take any action when they saw the burner phone. It took a random comment from my daughter two months later before I understood a deeper level of my son’s paranoia. The “hold up” became more obvious.
Later, talking to one of his apartment friends, a man who helped my son move all of his stuff from Dallas into my shed and my music room, said, “Yeah, he was quite a sight. He’d gear up and wear his military garb and walk around the complex. It’s no wonder he got picked off. He was an obvious target. Rich white kid playing at drug dealer.”
But, that’s skipping ahead a bit.
After my son was back in Austin, we had a session with his mom, his therapist, and me. First, I wanted him to piss in a drug test I had brought with me. He said he would, but the therapist deferred that motion and set the drug test kit on her side table. “What’s the second phone for,” I demanded. No answer.
In my mind, at that moment, my son needed to come clean on what was happening. He did not. The only reason we were in this meeting is I’d learned there was a burner phone and I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. We had an uneventful therapy session. No drug test. No plan. But an agreement to get back together in a week.
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