Good Morning!

This is really not how I start my day. However, I don’t speak English until I’m about 1/2 way through my second cup of coffee. I love the slow morning movement of being retired. I hustled and bustled to get 2 children off to school and a husband out the door so I could get ready to get to my first grade classroom. I’d beeline straight to the coffee pot on arrival before heading down the hallway of colorfully displayed art work of future Picassos. I loved being a teacher. For 38 years that’s how I started my days. Now I enjoy the solidarity of no alarm clock, sleeping in, meditating while drinking my coffee and planning my schedule for the day- most days.

I have a new challenge in my solidarity. I am trying to help a recovering addicted adult that just so happens to be my son. I moved ten hours away to retire and escape from the puzzle pieces, slowly put together, over many years, that took the form of a long time addiction. So many things I didn’t understand. Sometimes, I thought I was losing it-missing items, dialogue that was twisted, strange visitors at all times of the day or night. Always a need for more money. It didn’t make sense to me. I just knew that the only way I was going to change the situation was to leave it behind me. My children are adults. They are working and taking care of themselves. They had flown the coop( with intervals of returning to the comforts of the home they grew up in). It was my time. I rolled the dice, sold my house and moved to the beach.

The next two years, I enjoyed entertaining guests, traveling and doing exactly what I wanted to do. That’s what retirement’s all about! My children seemed to be fine. My daughter would hint that things with her brother were not as they should be. He was always nasty to her so they weren’t the best of buds. She would never come out and tell me any details. I believe she was trying to protect me from the reality of the situation. One night the phone rang, “Mom, I want to let you know before you hear it from somewhere else. The police are looking for your son. They have a warrant out for his arrest for selling drugs and they think he’s on his way to your house” Like a bolt of lightning, It got real- fast.