This Christmas we were blessed to be with seven of our children. Some flew, or drove across many miles, with surprises in their bags. They prepared most of the meals, and were generous in their gifts.
But there is one of our children who went away.
Benjamin wobbles on the edge of anger some of the time, and we are all skilled at taming him. But on Christmas Eve his outburst was enough over the line that we had to act. We asked the Mobile Crisis Center to send out someone to help us navigate a decision, and while they were perfectly friendly, they had no resources to offer. We decided, in fits and starts of exhaustion, to admit him.
The first hospital that we called, the one he went to in 2017, said that he is the wrong age. It was hard to keep trying. The second call was to the facility he went to three years ago, and bless the woman working when she probably wanted to be at home baking cookies.
"Bring him now. We have plenty of beds."
They probably had plenty of beds because families that have it together move heaven and earth to collect their children at holidays, broken and whole. But we were in solidarity that Benjamin had to be somewhere else. Well, solidarity is too strong a word. Our collective resolve could have been blown over by a wolf looking for pigs.
Benjamin was embarrassed. At least the part of him that wrestles against his own fury is.
"I'm sorry I made you cry."
Yet for all the pain he was immersed in, he did not cry. I doubt whether I have ever seen him cry. Where does sadness go, or fear when the only emotion you can find the door for is Mad?
Benjamin's brothers and sisters give a lot of thought to gifting him at Christmas. There have been wool felted Angry Birds and defenseless pigs, a Lion King t-shirt, Lego sets, and this year a Who's Who of all Disney characters. It is helping him pass the time.
This is his third stint in residential treatment, though it is anything but charming. If I were to imagine the miracle I am hoping for it would look something like the cleverness of that third little pig. Maybe some new protocol will keep Benjamin safe from the monster that snarls at him, and it will be tricked into climbing down the chimney and be gone forever.
But I suppose that is just a fairy tale.
