COMMITTED
AA’s legacy of service embodied all that had worked for me as an enthusiastic Christian teenager. Then one week after I’d fucked up, my son had been magically returned to me. And a little while later, as a result of having helped myself to some equipment that I strictly shouldn’t have, I legally secured custody of Samuel. My unmanageable thirty-three-day binge, and the DUI accident I’d had, hadn’t yet convinced Kathy that I might have a problem with alcohol or drugs. According to Kathy, both incidents were purely circumstantial. As a young clinical psychologist, she’d spent the first fifteen years of her career working with addicts and alcoholics in the field of addictions. So, she may have been right. In meetings, there was a lot that I couldn’t relate to, but I simply needed to add the word yet to my vocabulary – I haven’t been there or done that . . . yet. But then, I could readily identify a lot of the distorted, restless, irritable, and discontented patterns of thoughts and reactions to life that we all seemed to have in common.
With the help of my sponsor I worked through all Twelve Steps, concerned that I might have crucially missed the First Step since I hadn’t truly surrendered to being an alcoholic or an addict. But thankfully, that wasn’t required for membership. The only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking or using, and I could commit to that. But above all, as far as I was concerned, there was something rather unique going on in these Twelve Step fellowships. Something that had given me a second chance to be with my son, and I wasn’t about to walk away from it.
Samuel’s nightmares were soon all but a thing of the past. And we were back to reading about a building in the city that comes alive at night and Oonga Boongas who stopped baby Louise from crying. I soon discovered that he’d been born with a rather sophisticated palate with a penchant for fusion foods. I can reasonably follow a recipe, but I’m not a good cook. So I seriously needed to up my game, and started delivering Thai Red Curry Risotto, Beef Kimchi Fried Rice, Kung Pao Chicken Tacos, and the like. At a restaurant, he could detect if the chef had changed the recipe or switched out an ingredient and he’d soon be in the kitchen enquiring about the changes and politely offering his opinion. There were no peanut butter sandwiches in his lunch box. But rather an array of cured meats, nori wrapped rice balls, fresh herb and rocket salads, caramelized onions, and speciality cheeses.
Jeremy was spending more time hanging out at Ed’s shed – a friend’s garage that they’d cleaned up and decorated with makeshift furniture. His taste in music changed and he learned to play the electric guitar. He made a few new friends, and he met his first girlfriend. He was spending less time at home than I would have preferred, but more importantly, he was staying away from drugs and the crowd that he used to use with. Then one evening, while walking with a friend to the shed, they were held up at gunpoint. He was less than fifty metres from our
front door when they were shoved in a car and driven to the nearest ATM to empty their accounts. They lost their money, watches, and phones, and were driven around for a few hours before they were finally let go. They had no idea where they were, but they found a police station and thankfully returned home. They were both physically unharmed, but we all knew that it could have been so much worse.
Despite our best efforts and additional support from speech and occupational therapists, Samuel continued to fall behind in his first year of schooling. Initially, I wasn’t overly concerned because most of his classmates were going through the same process. When I checked with the school, I discovered that roughly eighty per cent of boys in their first year needed some form of additional support – which did make me question the school’s relationship with the burgeoning cottage industry of therapists and whether any of this was helping or harming the children’s sense of self-worth. Naturally, I followed each recommendation. Like most parents, I just wanted to give him the best possible start. Also, I was cautious because I hadn’t yet been granted custody. In his first school year, I had no idea about what might have gone on during the six months he’d spent with his mother. Personally, I would have preferred to have spent the money on a child psychologist, but I simply couldn’t take that risk. On the other hand, Samuel was adept at socializing and he’d developed a delightful circle of friends. And he was still a bit of a hero to the kids and staff from the attached kindergarten – I hoped it all would sustain his confidence.
Still, by the end of his first year, we needed to change schools. I had hoped he’d be allowed to stay at the same school, but we weren’t really given an option when he was diagnosed with ADHD. The move to a new school entailed an hour of sitting in traffic, but the school provided all the appropriate educational supports and adjustments to meet Samuel’s learning needs. I may have been reluctant, but changing his school turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. Samuel thrived in his new environment and by the end of his fourth year of schooling, he walked away with almost all the academic awards. Even though Samuel rarely saw his mother, I kept Aida informed because I believed it was the right thing to do. I forwarded all his school reports and all of the school’s notices to Aida – who to date had not attended a single meeting with any of the school’s in-house therapists, any PTA meetings held with his teachers, or the previous two awards ceremonies. But she showed up to this one. As I slid into the available seat next to Aida, I couldn’t have been happier for Samuel who’d worked so hard in his determination to attend a normal school.
CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
‘Can’t we go to Montague Springs?’ Samuel asked as I surfaced to take a breath. I was giving him dolphin rides while taking a break from the parks and spending the day at the pool. I’d been pushing to make the most of our time at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but we were struggling to navigate the mayhem of Thanksgiving week. I had asked, but I was told by our travel agent that the parks should be relatively quiet because most Americans prefer spending this holiday period at home with their families. Had I done my own investigation, I would have discovered that Thanksgiving week is one of the craziest weeks in the parks. Montague Springs is an affordable self-catering resort only a two-hour drive from Cape Town, and we’d taken a twenty-three-hour flight to get to Florida. Montague Springs is kind of special and Samuel loves the hot springs, the waterslide, and the enchanting resident birdlife. It’s a favourite of ours, but come on, we were in the Happiest Place on Earth, and I can’t think of a better place to stretch the imagination of any pre-teen. We pushed on and ended our two-week holiday at the park with a line from Lilo & Stitch, ‘This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.’
After we returned, I thought I was struggling with jetlag and a rather ferocious stomach bug, but I kept getting progressively worse. Eating became increasingly difficult and eventually, I couldn’t even sip the electrolytes and supplements I’d been prescribed. I finally collapsed and was admitted to the hospital. I was placed on a drip, and the doctors were scratching their heads as they tried to determine what was wrong with me. The doctor who admitted me seemed convinced that he was dealing with HIV. I was displaying some of the symptoms; rapid weight loss, recurring fevers, profuse night sweats, pronounced fatigue and weakness, memory loss and depression, prolonged swollen lymph glands and chronic diarrhoea, which had lasted more than a week, but none of the sores that develop in the mucous membranes or the purplish blotches on or under the skin. I was concerned until my blood test came back negative. In my life, I’d had my moments of unprotected promiscuity. But I also had taken several HIV tests for insurance purposes after I hadn’t had sex for more than one year. The truth was, that I hadn’t had any sex with anyone after I’d followed my sponsor’s suggestion of practising celibacy for the first year of recovery. Next, they suspected lung cancer, which thankfully also was scrapped. Finally, after a process of elimination, it was determined I’d contracted myalgia encephalopathy, more commonly referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome. While travelling, I’d apparently picked up a rare stomach bug that had resulted in post-viral fatigue or Yuppie Flu.
Other than having several names, there didn’t seem to be much information available on the subject. There seemed to be two camps of thought about the cause and nature of the syndrome. Some viewed the physical and mental fatigue as being caused by prolonged depression, while others argued that couldn’t account for an entire village contracting chronic fatigue syndrome after an unrelated virus had swept through it. All I knew was I had gone from being extremely fit to physically feeling like an unhealthy ninety-year-old who couldn’t focus or remember a thing, all in one week. Over the course of a gruelling four-day exhibition build where I used to comfortably keep up with twenty-year-old crew members, I was suddenly struggling to climb a single flight of stairs and had to keep detailed notes and set reminders for absolutely everything.
The only advice that I could find from medical science was to rest. To do nothing or as little as possible for approximately two years, and as a single parent with a small business to run, this simply wasn’t an option. I was then referred to an alternative medical doctor with extensive experience in the field of homoeopathic treatments. He confirmed my diagnosis and suggested an alternative explanation. In his opinion, chronic fatigue was entirely related to the digestive system. My system had apparently lost its ability to discern what nutrients my body required and was randomly polluting the rest of my organs. He prescribed a series of colonic treatments and a diet of dark green raw vegetables and leaves, sprouts, and soaked almonds. And I needed to raise my alkaline level with the use of pH drops added to distilled water. With nothing else on offer, I religiously stuck to his program for a little more than nine months and for a while, it did seem to help. My concentration levels seemed to improve, but nothing I did alleviated the physical exhaustion – I finally decided I’d just have to learn to live with it.
I had to rely more on my small complement of staff who I viewed more as partners. Everyone either owned shares or had a profit percentage share. Even though I was rarely more than a few feet away, in my absence the business didn’t go so well. It wasn’t long before I received a spate of resignations and I was left with one remaining shareholder – who unbeknown to me, had become addicted to crack-cocaine. In an attempt to control the situation, his wife had taken away his cards and had restricted his access to cash. It took me a while before I discovered a lot of expensive business tools were going missing. But it wasn’t just the tools, it was just about anything that could be readily turned into cash, including many of my children’s DVDs. We checked him into rehab on the advice of his addiction counsellor, who felt that it would be in the best interest of his recovery. I had to let him go.
CHRISTMAS 2008
Jeremy had matured into a caring but no-nonsense older brother. Having graduated from college he quickly stepped into the business to help me out. With an innate understanding of the business, he embodied all I’d envisioned while observing the business community on the Atlantic seaboard and all that I’d hoped to accomplish in the early stages of my relationship with Aida. I was filled with renewed hope as Jeremy surpassed all my expectations to become the very best employee I’d ever worked with.
As I watched the boys play-fencing in the back garden, I wondered if I’d forgotten anything for tomorrow’s lunch. Granny Pam would be joining us. Usually at Christmas, we’d all be invited by my sister Abigail to join her and her husband at her brother-in-law’s home. Their home in the northern suburbs was an entertainer’s dream with a spectacular view of Table Mountain. But naturally, it was a much larger gathering and given the choice,
Granny preferred spending Christmas with the three of us. Some families I know prefer sharing a celebratory dinner on Christmas eve, then stay up late to open their presents. Out of habit, we’d always gotten together on Christmas day for lunch. The boy’s friendly banter had turned to ‘We can’t be brothers’ or ‘No, no, no. You must have been adopted.’ They were having fun and simply teasing each other as siblings sometimes do.
All in all, it had been a pretty good day. It was Christmas day after all, and I’d managed to make sure that Granny was served the meal that she preferred. Jeremy and I aren’t too fussy, but when it comes to food, Granny and Samuel are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Generally, we prefer our vegetables slightly undercooked and a bit crunchy, and our meats a bit more on the rare side. But, as per her generation, Granny preferred hers what we’d call cooked to death. But it’s not too difficult to keep everyone happy with a traditional English roast. I served granny the well-done slices I’d carved off the ends of the roasted meats and her ‘over-cooked’ helping of vegetables that I’d kept on the boil for that much longer. We were about to eat when the boys picked up on their innocent rhetoric from the previous evening.
‘You’re not my brother,’ said Samuel, then suggested, ‘Ask Dad. He’ll tell you. You’re adopted.’
I thought Granny, who’d been inspecting the carrot on her fork, was about to ask if I’d added enough salt to the corned beef. Carrots cooked together with the corned beef is a favourite of hers, which I rarely managed to prepare as well as she could. I didn’t do too badly with the Christmas chicken, lamb, and pork, but I invariably failed to get the carrots just quite right. They were usually either not soft enough or not salty enough for her liking. Well, it was either going to be the carrots or the roast potatoes that was bound to catch her attention. But she stopped dead in her tracks to ask, ‘When did you find out that Jeremy wasn’t your son?’
Then before any of us could say a word she proceeded to lay out the evidence she’d been carrying from before Jeremy was born. She told us everything, from sitting outside the home I shared with Valeria and monitoring her daily lunchtime affair with a close friend of ours called Andrew, to Jeremy’s birth, his appearance, the way he walked, his teenage pimples, and even his ongoing struggle with Psoriasis. Everything she’d observed about Jeremy over the past twenty-two years of his life had reminded her of Andrew. Devastated, Jeremy politely excused himself and retreated to his room. Stunned, it took me a while to wrap my head around what had just happened. My thoughts bounced between Why tell us now? and Why not then?
Jeremy was struggling. After retreating to his room on Christmas day, he hardly ever emerged. Occasionally, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him sitting on the end of my bed, silently burning himself with a cigarette, the lighter, or both. Therapy and the medication he’d been prescribed didn’t seem to help. I’m not sure how well I handled the situation, but I’d like to believe that I created enough space for us to talk. I tried to assure him it didn’t matter to me whether he was my biological son or not. If he needed to know, we could do a paternity test, but that was entirely up to him. But whatever some DNA test may show, it wouldn’t change a thing for me. As far as I was concerned, he’d always be my son, and nothing would ever change that.
I was really worried about Jeremy, but we had a job to do and I was still struggling with chronic fatigue. In the circumstances, I had no alternative but to dial back the business to a few key clients. Between myself and a friend of Jeremy’s who’d been introduced to the business, we were doing okay and keeping our heads above water. To his credit Jeremy, from the bounds of his room, could apply his much-needed photo-shop skills in getting graphics ready for print. Things went horribly wrong when a client’s husband was involved in a head-on collision, which drastically delayed the graphics. In hindsight, I should have just said no. With almost no sleep, Jeremy took on an almost impossible deadline. On the final day, the day before the show was due to open, the additional stress erupted into an unhealthy young-bull, old-bull head butting session. In the world of exhibitions, being late simply doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter what went wrong or whose fault it was, the show is going to open as advertised. We delivered on time, but Jeremy had had enough.
After two months with Valeria’s sister, Jeremy returned. He’d decided that he didn’t need a paternity test, but he did want to go to his mother. His decision apparently had nothing to do with our head-butting session and he didn’t even remember the incident the way I did. But for the longest time I battled to forgive myself. He hadn’t gotten over being mugged and abducted, and he neither felt safe nor saw a future for himself in South Africa.
From my perspective, he had stuff that only he and his mother could sort out. So, with hugs, loves, tears and a promise to stay in regular contact, I said goodbye to my son at the airport.
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