The Total Eclipse of My Son

Twenty two years ago, this month, just before my twenty first birthday, I found myself responsible for something more vitally important than anything I could ever imagine–a human life.

My son, William Cal Webb (Demoral decided he would be called C.J.), was born on October 16, 1984 at 4:54 in the afternoon. Relief came first. I was so glad to be through the labor and no longer pregnant. By the next day, when things settled down and they brought him to me to hold, I wasn’t sure what to do. I had never held any human that small. He had the hiccups and he was red with a slightly cone-shaped head.

It was three nights later, as I stood over his bassinet, that IT hit me. Rather, IT ran gently through me like a silk ribbon charged with divine energy. I felt this energy go through the top of my head, down my arm and into my fingertips as I touched the top of C.J.’s fuzzy little crown while he slept.

I have always thought of that moment as my turn for the maternal instinct injection from above. Today, I think I got a super mega dose, too much–perhaps, quite possibly overkill. But it was the most spiritual moment of my life.

He was changed and bathed constantly, fed fresh meat and frozen vegetables, cooked, blended, and packaged by Martha Stewart’s role model, hovered over, and absolutely adored by me.

His father–not so much. My husband was young, nervous, uncomfortable and not used to sharing my attention. My nurture overload and his lack thereof would render complete cohesiveness as elusive as the Holy Grail for the next two decades.

C.J. was a joy from the start. He slept through the night from THE FIRST NIGHT home. I would come to wonder if he ever really wanted to be in this world to begin with. His birth was two weeks overdue and he wouldn’t even wake up voluntarily to eat for four days. The doctor calmly advised me to wake him up, feed him, and relax. I might add that I have not relaxed for almost a quarter of a century.

As he grew, compliments about C.J.’s good manners and polite behavior followed me everywhere. This continued right up to the official age of adulthood (which I have decided is not old enough). Teachers loved him and he never earned anything less than perfect conduct grades his entire way through school. Unlike most of his friends he graduated, a semester early, from high school.

He wasn’t stellar academically. He didn’t like homework, preferred daydreaming and watching the antics of others in class, doing just what he had to in order to get by and keep me off his back. This was a constant source of contention between him and me from the first grade on. He wouldn’t read unless forced, always opting to play outside, dwelling in imaginary places where capes were worn and he was “their” leader. Never one to play computer games or watch a lot of television, my son just wanted to build forts and pretend he was an explorer in the woods surrounding our home. He was also very social and well liked by other kids. I really felt that God, knowing I am not long on patience, gave ME the perfect child and that nothing could ever go wrong.

A word of advice: NEVER, EVER under ANY circumstances think this way. I couldn’t have been more deluded.

To this day, I love my son with a force beyond description. And, on this day, he is in the Volusia County Branch Jail for the second time in two years. This time he’s going to prison. I cannot find words to describe the horror that has plagued me for the past four years.

Two weeks before C.J.’s eighteenth birthday, this person who never went out on a school night, voluntarily got a job at fourteen, and worked almost every weekend night throughout his teen years, was not home by dark. Just as panic was mounting, I received THE call. Caller ID read Memorial Hospital. The voice on the other end of the line said, “We have William here. He’s taken something.”

That something turned out to be hallucinogenic mushrooms and so would begin the worst imaginable odyssey of our lives.

Tomorrow’s posting will pick up here and bring you up to the present. The nightmare continues but, as with anything, there have been so many growth opportunities.

Take care today.