Terrible Mother's Page

[continued from Parts I and II; this is the third part in a four-part series]



So I set about righting everything I could. As the gear dried in the South Dakota sun, I found the dishpan, took it into the bathroom, and filled it with dish soap and water. We still had dirty dishes from the interrupted dinner of the previous… Continue

[continued from Part I]



The drive from Custer State Park into town was demoralizing. All of the kids cried, but Thing One was inconsolable. She cried long after the other two had stopped. “How are we supposed to do this if anything can happen at any time?” she asked.



I said, “It will get easier,” but I wasn’t sure it would. In town, we stayed in the Custer Motel, a cute and… Continue

By the time we pulled into the Hampton Inn in, Sioux Falls, South Dakota the Things Three and I were exhausted, and run down. We were only ten days into our around-the-country road trip, and already we’d run into problems. The first problems arose almost immediately, but seemed easy enough to overcome. It started when Thing One, just two days into the adventure, fell ill with a stomach virus, and couldn’t hold anything much down for 36 hours. We spent a few days in Montana with Friend One… Continue

My mom is a drug counselor, but not just any kind of drug counselor. She doesn’t work with potheads and alcoholics, or spend her time at a lovely rehabilitation unit housed in a hospital, but made to look “homey” with quilts and prints of ocean waves. Instead Mom counsels people who are, in the common parlance of rehabs, “dual diagnosis.” These are people who have a serious mental health issue, like schizophrenia, and a serious drug addiction, like methamphetamines or heroin, at the same time.… Continue