Happy Birthday, Shayne.

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M p my. K. BBB b V IIn May, Shayne was living in his car.

I don’t know what it is about spring and summer that bring my son’s demons to the forefront.  The grass starts growing and flowers pop out and Shayne stops taking his meds.  I watch him.  He talks to himself, throws back his head and laughs, argues with himself, but only when he thinks no one is watching or listening.  He keeps weird hours and skirts around the house in the dark when everyone is sleeping.  He is afraid of dying, the government, electricity, his toothbrush.  He thinks that maybe I’m not really his mother.  Maybe I’m an imposter trying to steal his soul.  Or poison him.  He thinks marijuana helps.  And maybe it does.  But not from what I see.  Instead his paranoia and mania intensify.  His eyes take on a wild, round look. The timbre of his voice changes and I start to prepare for the storm that is going to hit hard.

But this time, we were able to squash the storm before he ended up in a psych ward.  He started a new drug, one that combines an anti-depressant and an antipsychotic.  One of his issues is he hates the antipsychotic.  He likes the anti-depressant.  So the idea was that if is taking  a drug that he likes with the one he doesn’t, maybe he’ll keep taking it.

It’s worked.  More or less.  He has reached a new level of “normal.”  He can carry on a conversation with me.  He can do tasks without forgetting basic steps.  He can answer his phone.  He has a level of empathy. He still sleeps more than “normal” and he is wary of talking to anyone outside of a very intimate circle.  He still hears voices.  I know because he talks to them when he thinks no one is listening and sometimes he laughs and reacts to things only he hears.  I guess this is our “normal.”

Today is his birthday.  He is 26.  I woke up thinking about the night he was born.  He was eleven days overdue.  My parents were with me for a couple of weeks waiting for him make his appearance.  We co-habitated in my little one bedroom in north Denver.  Mom kept my apartment spotless while I went to work.  They walked over to the mall and bought baby stuff during the day.  In the evenings, we ate dinner and watched the Rockies play their first season at Mile High. Dad would mess around with my antenna and tinfoil trying to get the clearest picture possible.  I was too poor for cable in those days, yet I had the audacity to think I could bring a kid into the world all by myself.

I will never forget the night my water broke.  I had taken the day off work, feeling especially tired that day.  Mom and Dad took me for a drive and we had Chinese food.  I remember ordering sweet and sour shrimp.  We all took naps that afternoon and then Mom made hamburgers for dinner.  She overcooked mine, because she never could understand how I could eat meat rare.  She was sure I was going to die from botulism.  We argued and I ended up eating it because she called me ungrateful and brought out the tears.  Frankly, I could be a straight up bitch with my mom back in the day.  That’s the truth.  But I ate the burger and promptly got sick.

I didn’t really know that contractions would make me nauseous.  That was my first lesson that pain will make me throw up.  I just thought it was all the food I had eaten that day.  So instead of going to the hospital, I went to bed.  My water broke just after I turned off the light.  Mom armed herself with lipstick and tried to get me to put a little on before we went out to the car.  My dad spoke to her in his low, patient way like he was calming a horse, “Not now, Madre. Put it in your purse for later.”

I can remember every minute of the long ride to Boulder, but I’ll spare my readers the details.  I’ll just say, I was crowning when we got to the hospital.  My mid-wife sat me on a rocking chair and I rocked back and the chair fell over.  I ended up delivering Shayne on the floor of the birthing room.  I remember seeing his chest expand as he cried and actually knowing in that moment that he was going to have his father’s build, long and whip-thin.  I swiped at my tears, not letting myself cry for the decisions that brought me to that room alone.

Shayne swears he remembers being on the scale and remembers my mom squealing and being handed to my dad.  I think he has just heard the story and seen the pictures so many times that he thinks he remembers.  The one thing that is for sure, is that from that moment, that boy was all of ours.  He was the center of our world.  He brought my dad from a deep depression.  He brought joy to my mother’s eyes.  He made me want to do something with my life.  He brought the three of us together in a way we had never been before.

Shayne says that he started hearing voices when he was five or six.  But for mom, dad and I, the voices came from nowhere.  I remember the first time Shayne was shot up with Haldol and taken to the hospital. Mom sat at his bed side, fussing about his dirty socks, bawling.  Dad just sat holding his grandson’s hand, not saying anything.  My parents died before things got really bad.  If I am thankful for anything, it is that.

I say that, but my parents have been in my heart through the whole journey.  Last night, I dreamed of Christmas when Shayne was little.  Dad was holding him on top of a plastic slide, letting him go into my mother’s waiting arms.  It was so real.  So vivid. I woke up, confused.  I didn’t know where their house was and then I remembered that they were dead.  It hit me like it does sometimes.  Like I am facing it again for the first time.  I was able to push back the sheet and get out of bed and face the day, just like every day.

Watching Shayne with schizophrenia is like riding an endless loop on a rickety, wooden rollercoaster.  Sometimes it almost stops and I think I can jump off.  And sometimes I think I should just jump off and let my son ride on alone, but so far I haven’t.  I think about holding him in my arms that very first time.  I wanted every hope any mother wants for her child.  Despite everything, the hope never disappears.