Standing in Slippers

Standing in Slippers

His voice was shaking. I think he was crying. "I swerved to avoid a deer. The car, it's totaled." He was so upset.

We immediately said we were on the way. He didn't argue.

He had been driving home from work, about 45 minutes from Scranton. Closer to us, but not close enough to get him.

Action, not thought. My husband and I threw a couple things in a bag. Got in the car.

The police brought him to a gas station. He took an Uber back to the sober house. When we got there, he was waiting for us. Big hugs.

He was still shaken but physically okay. A scratch on his elbow. He kept saying the car was totaled. It was after 3 AM, so we decided to stay rather than get a hotel. He went up to bed. My husband and I slept on the couches in the living room of his sober house.

I didn't sleep. The house cat treated me like a novelty, playing with me in the middle of the night. At some point, one of the guys who lived there walked past me in his underwear on his way to the bathroom.

In the morning, I needed to shower. The water was warm. I stood there, exhausted. Scared. Wondering what the hell this was. Where I was standing now.

This wasn't the life I had imagined. I had an eighteen year old and I was a hundred and fifty miles from home, standing in a shower in a sober house, dealing with a car accident.

How did I get here?

I got dressed. That's when I realized. No shoes. I had left my sneakers by my bed when we threw things in a bag and rushed out the door. Two and a half hours in slippers hadn't seemed crazy in the middle of the night. But walking around urgent care and the tow yard and to lunch in those slippers, that felt like something.

We took him to urgent care. He didn't really need to be there, but it was something you do after an accident. The doctor asked about his substance use. In the context of knowing who he was and what he was working on, the questions did not make sense. He was annoyed with her. Not angry. Just annoyed. Like, really?

My husband waited in the waiting room. I sent him next door to get coffee for all of us.

I just stared especially at the multiple Narcan posters on the wall of urgent care. Trying to piece it all together. Trying to make sense and take action at the same time.

Then we went to the tow yard. One of the wheels was completely off its axle, another embedded with grass and dirt. The windows were shattered. My husband assessed the damage, technical and financial. We emptied the car. Energy drinks. Clothes. Garbage. The fancy seat. My Christmas gift to him for his treasured car. Just stuff. All of it had to come out.

Everyone gave him unsolicited advice afterwards. He should have just hit the deer. But he had swerved. And the car was destroyed.

Once again, we were here. These are the times when recovery seems so fragile. Except this time, it was more normal things. The things other families deal with. A deer in the road. An accident. Not drugs. Not relapse. Just life.

He had worked hard to get that car. It was independence and freedom. And now it was totaled. It hurt to see him in pain once again. He had come so far and I was terrified this might derail his recovery.

But as we settled him back in, as he talked through what he needed to do next, I started to see something I had underappreciated. His resiliency. I thought this would be a blow. That it would derail him. But he dealt with it. Practically. Emotionally. He used the skills he had acquired. He moved on to the next thing, which for him meant researching new cars.

We went to a late lunch in those slippers and then lingered a little longer. Until he was ready for us to go.

He had called us. He had let us come. And although he was eighteen and living away from home for a couple of years in sober support, he still needed us and wanted us. I felt some relief in knowing that.

He was dealing with it. The loss, the disappointment, the practical steps of what came next. He was using the skills he had learned, leaning on his community, moving forward.

The drive home was quiet. We could have lost him. After seeing what the car looked like, that became so clear.

But this time, it wasn't drugs. It wasn't relapse. It was a deer in the road. A totaled car. The kind of problem other families deal with.

I keep remembering standing in that shower in a sober house in Scranton, wondering how this became my life. Grateful he was alive. Grateful he had called. Grateful, somehow, for normal problems. Still trying to make sense of all the pieces.