We’re driving and everything is green. I’m leaning into the wheel, hyper-focused, slowing on the curves and cringing when gravel pings the wheel wells. I embody caution on the hairpin turns while my husband drums his fingers on his knees, playing along to the song, and Kingsley fingers invisible letters on the window.

Three years ago, on a sun-dazed day like this, Kingsley was just a little boy in a car seat as I barreled down this same stretch. We were on our way to Frontenac to swim in a warm lake. I had “Homeless” on repeat, thinking of my dad, always in moments like these; he was newly dead, but my grief was a bright, beating thing, an animal in my chest, and oh, how he loved that song, the Graceland album our soundtrack to every road trip, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo our last concert together. I raised the volume, my eyes welling at the sound of that familiar chorus, the pitch and timbre of voices compelling me forward, too fast, plummeting the hills of the dirt road. 

I was six months sober, and everything was inside out. Every feeling gigantic, unwieldy; the evenings an endless agony, painfully boring and desperately lonely. And then, moments when I felt impossibly free, a survivor breaking through the surface, wild and blind, reborn. I was frightened by the scale of these enormous swings, but I understood them as part of the recovery process. 

…Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih

Something sing hello, hello, hello

Somebody say ih hih ih hih ih

Somebody cry why, why, why?

Kingsley’s little face in the rearview mirror. How long had he been watching me?

I lowered the volume.

“What do you think of the music, bub? Do you like it?” My voice was high and cheery, the falsest falsetto.

He frowned, then nodded faintly. He stared and stared. He didn’t know this crazy, reckless mom, driving so fast with the music so loud. 

…Strong wind destroy our home

Many dead, tonight it could be you

Strong wind, strong wind

Many dead, tonight it could be you

I’d told very few people that I’d quit drinking. Because I was a secret drunk, the very revelation that I was in recovery felt like success enough, so I focused on the easy admissions to the easiest audiences. I went to meetings and listened to horrific stories but told none of my own. I did the readings, I recited the prayers. I played possum, finding a way to stand apart from the others. 

I kept my darker truths submerged, but they clung to my ankles like seaweed. 

I did not apologize. 

I wasn’t ready to look back; I could not face the rearview, could not admit to my greatest fear, that even sober, sometimes I’m a terrible mother.  

It’s an awful thing to look at. 

…Homeless, homeless

Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

It’s been years since that awful drive, since those awful first months. Recovery continues to teach me the truths I never allowed: that there is beauty in grief; that I can withstand what I was sure would destroy me; and even: that denying my shortcomings does not prevent them from being. 

And the greatest mercy of all: that I can keep hating myself, but life isn’t interested in punishing me. 

…Kulumani, Kulumani sizwe

Singenze njani

Sometimes, easing around the bend of a country road, the wind roaring in my ears, I am okay with all that I got wrong. I forget the difference between what should be and what is, and I can hold onto a greater understanding that life isn’t keeping score. 

Today, listening to the boys count turkey vultures in the sky, just being here with them, alive among all this green, I know that it’s a gift, and I believe that I deserve it.