Page 81 of Glass Half Full
She shakes her head. “Dylan, the only thing I’ve wanted for the past nine years is for you to say the things you just said today. I wanted you to try again. I wanted you to fight. I didn’t want you to let one mistake define the rest of your life. Yes, I was disappointed. Yes, I was angry. I was furious, but that didn’t last very long, and it was never stronger than my love for you, or my love for this family.”
“So why...why have things been like this for so long?”
She’s crying now, tears streaking down the lines in her face, but she doesn’t sob. No, she’s as graceful as ever, my mom.
“You pulled away,” she answers. “You got so distant, and we didn’t know how to pull you back. You had so much guilt. You gave up on so many parts of yourself, and I guess I tried to do what I always did. I tried to make you reach higher, to want more for yourself, but it sounds like all I did was make you think I was angry. I haven’t been angry with you for a long time, Dylan, and I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”
“Mom...”
It’s all I can say. There’s too much to take in.
“Hey, Dill Pickle.” She uses the dumb nickname she used to call me as a kid, the one I banned her from saying after I turned ten, and it makes me laugh at the same time it nearly breaks me. “I want to help you, okay? Whatever I can do to make this new part of your life easier, I want to do it. I’m here for you. I’ve always been here for you. I’m your mother.”
She puts her arms around me, and even though she’s probably less than half my weight, I lean into her. I let her support me, and damn, does it ever feel good.
“I missed you, Mom.”
She hugs me even harder. We sit like that for a long time. The rest of the cider in my mug goes cold. When we finally break apart, she offers to get me more and comes back with steaming mugs for both of us.
“So,” she asks, always one for pragmatism, “what’s step one? Where do we go from here?”
“Step one.” I run a hand through my hair and blow out a breath. “Right, yeah, the actual making a plan part.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “I’m here. You don’t have to do it alone.”
“I just feel...stuck,” I admit, “like I’m trapped by what happened, like it’s this hole I’m always in danger of falling into. It’s just waiting for me to make one wrong move, to get too confident and take one false step, and then...I know that doesn’t make much sense. It’s hard to explain.”
“When you were in prison...” I flinch under her hand, but she just squeezes me again and repeats those words with a calm acceptance, like they’re a truth she’s come to accept, not a weight she can’t escape. “When you were in prison, I started going to this support group for mothers with children in there. I didn’t want to go at first. It sort of felt like admitting defeat, but it didn’t take me long to see how wrong I was about that. Those women were strong. They lifted each other up. I...I don’t know what I would have done without them. It was so important to talk to people who couldunderstand.”
She gets up from the couch, and I watch in confusion as she grabs her phone from off a side table and starts typing something on the screen.
“I should have talked to you about this a long time ago,” she explains, coming back to take her seat next to me, “but I didn’t want you to feel like I was forcing you into it. These are all the programs and groups they have in Montreal for people who’ve been to prison.”
I scan the list of links on the screen after she passes me the phone. There’s at least half a dozen.
Former Inmate Support Group.
The name almost makes me flinch again. I haven’t had the wordinmateapplied to me in a long, long time. I hoped I never would again.
“Now, I know what you’re probably thinking.” She pats my cheek. “I know you better than you think, Dill Pickle. I know you probably don’t want to feel any closer to prison when you’ve worked so hard to get away from it, but there will be people at these things who feel just like you do, who feelstuck. There will be people who used to feel stuck and don’t anymore. There will people whogetyou, and I think you need that, Dylan. I think it could really help.”
She’s right; this does feel like throwing myself into a world I’ve only ever wanted to close and barricade every door back to.
But that doesn’t work. Just like I told Renee, it’s a mark that doesn’t fade, and trying to outrun it hasn’t helped me much.
“Think about it,” Mom pleads. “Just give it some thought.”
“I can do that. I can think about it.” I wrap my hand around hers. “I meant what I said. From now on, I’m going to try.”
Twenty-One
Renee
EPISTLE: A poem or literary work composed in the form of letters or messages
I wasn’t old enough for a real glass
So they gave me a plastic cup.
