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Wanted: One Jailbreak Plan
If struggling to “manage” G’s increasingly crippling drinking habit meant staying home as much as possible, and I was afraid leave him alone while I went grocery shopping for too long (bringing back those four cases of Coors Light), and even going to a counselor seemed disloyal— was I a prisoner, as the counselor commented at our first meeting?
I’ve read that kids will adapt to almost anything, and mine seemed able to live with this particular prison. After all, they had their own room, once the addition to the glassworks was complete (a quick process). They showed no interest in the two things that fascinated me most here: the evening and weekend music get-togethers (other kids rarely came), and the glassblowing itself. But they were doing OK in school, they had friends, and we all laughed a lot. And they had a small river behind the property, a source of endless entertainment.
Still, the ways that I helped the boys connect with others changed drastically at this time. Those back-to-lander get-togethers, plucking poultry, roasting a pig, a crowd of kids running with freedom through the barns, fields, and henhouses — those were in the past. Even the weekend visits to their dad up north no longer included…
