Somebody’s Daughter

I finished my book today. Then I went out to run an errand. Outside the store was a young woman. Maybe in her mid-twenties. Her purse was on the bench by the door. She kept going down onto the ground, trying to get back up, knocking the purse off, her phone sliding out onto the pavement. She had urinated on herself. It was brutally hot. People were walking past.

I called 911.

A fire truck came. They checked her over. Eventually they left. She stayed. I bought her a bottle of water and some orange juice. I went over and talked to her. She told me she’d recently been in jail. She said she’d just gotten out of the hospital.

She told me she was trying to get clean. I don’t know her story. I don’t know what was true. None of that is really the point. I looked at her and said something I don’t think the man I used to be would have said.

“Listen. You’re not a bad person. You’ve just got to deal with this problem.”

She looked at me and said: “Thank you. You’re so kind. Most people don’t care.”

That broke something open in me. I never expected to react that way.

Years ago I might have been one of those people walking past. I might have thought: what a loser. Today I couldn’t. Today I looked at her and saw somebody’s daughter. And I saw my son.

Not because their stories are the same. They’re not. Once you’ve loved someone through this, sometimes you see the person before you see the problem. And I couldn’t stop thinking: somebody loves this girl.

There was another thought I don’t particularly like admitting. I wished my son had been standing beside me. For a moment I wanted him to see her. Look at this. Look where this can go. Then I realized that wasn’t mine to do. He doesn’t need me to frighten him into recovery. He is living his own life.

The woman outside that store wasn’t there to teach my son something. Maybe she taught me something instead.

I got back in my car and started crying. I drove home, pulled into the garage, turned it off, and couldn’t stop. Not a couple of tears. It was uncontrollable, like something was releasing. I don’t know what. I don’t know what the hell it was.

Maybe it was this. Beneath everything I have learned, there remains one truth I still have enormous difficulty accepting: I cannot save my son. Just as I couldn’t save that young woman today.

I could call 911. I could give her water. I could look her in the eyes. And then my part was over. I’ve spent much of my life solving problems. Addiction doesn’t give a damn about that skill set.

Every parent in this has to face it eventually. They recover. Or they end up in jail, or on the street, or dead. Those aren’t scare tactics. They’re not predictions either. I refuse to live every day as though the worst has already happened. But I know now that those roads exist.

Good people can get terribly fucked up. Being broken does not erase your humanity. I didn’t always understand that. My son taught me. My father used to tell me that I felt too deeply. I’m beginning to wonder whether it might also be a gift.

The answer isn’t to stop feeling. Maybe it’s learning what to do with the feeling. I couldn’t rescue her. She isn’t my daughter. But I could make sure that, for one minute, somebody saw the person underneath the mess. I could feel the good person in there. I wanted her to know somebody else could too.

I was supposed to run that errand this morning. I stayed home because I wanted to finish the book. I finished it. Then I went.

I don’t know whether that was coincidence, or something I was meant to see. The timing was interesting.

A young woman was suffering. I stopped. For a few minutes she mattered to me.