LEANING, Section 4 

When a Lean Isn’t

A cry for help that rejects reciprocation describes not leaning but using.

Sometimes we who assist fail to notice our being used and consequently do not help wisely. In a hot midsummer of our children’s teen years, I returned from traveling to meet a sixteen-year-old boy our son invited to live us with. Doug, recently graduated from high school and kicking up his own moral storm, gathered that this boy needed help and knew we had some at our house. I will call our guest Monte. We met around the dining room table where so many decisions of our family are made, agreed to, challenged or ignored. We tried to explain our family, and he tried to explain himself. My journal says, “There has been trauma, lying, drinking, pot, prescription drug abuse, irresponsibility, fighting, etc. Will we be able to help?

 

I do not know if we did. But I do know that by the time our on Gordy came home from two weeks of camp to find Monte sharing his room, my journal already recorded drinking bouts, a few fights, and a list of Monte’s injuries: a tooth is chipped, a swollen lip, elbow stitches, bruised cheek and head.

 

I knew that Gordy was good for Monte when I overheard their first private conversation. Gordy said, “Is that your Snoopy Dog?” pointing to a small stuffed dog on Monte’s pillow. “Do you sleep with it?”

“A, well, yeah,” came a cautious reply.

“Oh,” said Gordy, “I’ve got a blanket around here somewhere. My mom made it when I was born. I call it Trusty.”

 

Tensions melted. Compatible relationships began. Monte slipped comfortably into the line of sulking siblings arguing before school over the one bathroom they shared. We thought Monte was leaning on our family. Maybe he even hoped he was, but he was not. He did not lean; he could not. He used. Had we met him six months earlier than we did, we would have met a good kid unconsciously and adoringly linked to his older brother, earning above-average grades, expressing a great sense of humor, a love of surfing, a busy social life. Then, strike one; strike two.

 

Monte’s older brother died and nearly simultaneously his parents divorced. Suddenly, twice stunned, Monte worked at straightening up, way up. He did not lean, he handled loss with his fists, drugs, and anger. My journal says, 

Monte comes home late Wednesday night . . . At about 9:30pm. He confronts me. 

“You’ve taken my things,” he said.

“I took your knife and club. True.”

“I want them now,” he replied.

“No.”

The verbal push begins again. He needs to defend himself, he says. He only wants them in his room. Do I want him to get killed? He asks. I assure him there are alternatives to fights. He is not interested in alternatives. 

We argue loudly about the removal of weapons.

“My dad lets me have them,” he tells me. 

“Then I will give them to your dad and he can give them to you if he chooses but you cannot live here with weapons. 

 

Two months later I wrote:

Monday.First day of school.

Hot. Very hot. Kim is excited, Gordy is edgy, Monte is in a fight and suspended for a day and a half. We begin again. 

“But everyone knows its not my fault,” he says happily.

Tuesday.

Monte is at home. He cleans blinds for me. We discuss the ramifications of the fight. He sees retaliation as an essential response.

Today his father was hospitalized and even though it is not threatening, Monte goes crazy with fear. They fight, they cannot live together, but he surely cannot live without him. He visits his dad in the hospital, goes for a beer afterward, and then home to bed, crying. He is high, I think. Dangerously agitated. I go to him to see if needs to talk. 

“I gotta hit something. Man, I gotta hit something.”

“Don’t hit me,” I ask.

“No, but I gotta hit something. My dad brought me a mattress once. I hav’ta hit something hard.”

 

So, I brought in a couch cushion. He slugs with violence in language and physical force. He is teetering on hysteria.

“Gotta walk. Cotton-mouth.”

Doug and Dave wake up, try to help. Gordy is away, Kim sleeps through it all. Again and again Monte repeats, “gotta walk,” staggers, trips over a fan set on the floor, runs his fingers through his thick, blond hair.

 

Doug, Dave and I are frightened, thinking of the next step. Doug says, “Let’s go run.” And out the door they go. Both in boxer shorts, neither of them thinking about it. Did Monte have on any shoes? I don’t think so. They ran around the rural blocks and return when Monte is finally able to walk down the steep drive. To bed. 

    I called the mental health team for advice while the guys ran. Dave is calm, while my stomach is twisted, sick. Tomorrow I have a full schedule. Who cares? Another day with Monte passes. Will they ever end?

 

Wednesday

  Dark days for me . . . Monte gets the best of me. His hyper behavior is exhausting. His high opinion of himself—exasperating. He is home from school with a tale of a “nearly in a fight.” He loves it. He thrives on excess and excitement. 

I am tired. Monte, Monte. Will he ever yield? Will we ever be able to open his heat to good? What will it take?

 

On Thursday, we confronted him. His school counselor said he was not attending class. We have him a choice. By Saturday afternoon, he had to choose to change his pattern and stay with us or declare his satisfaction with how things were and choose to leave. Some cooperation had to occur. I asked Monte to mentally stand across the room and observe himself. “Tell me about him,” I said.

 

“He likes to get drunk, likes drugs, likes to talk to girls, likes to fight.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“No. But it’s fun.”

That journal page ends with this sentence: “Change is not wanted but a house is.”

Monte wanted to stay, of course. He wanted to use. He did not lean; he needed no rest, no support. He needed place.

 

October. Monday

Dave’s birthday

So difficult to communicate any sense to Monte. He will risk all for his independence.

“Do you know we care for you, Monte?” I asked.

“You just said you do.”

“But do you know?”

He repeated what he had just said.

“Do you believe us? That we care?”

Quietly, “I guess.”

We asked for one week of cooperation with basic family rules. Goodness knows we have few. No. He sees any rule as a prison. He “wants out.”

Within thirty minutes he leaves us. “Ouch,” says my heart.

 

In the summer of the second canoe trip, while I fretted over a tall man wearing a cowboy hat, Monte reappeared. Two years had passed since we saw him last, and with those years a felony, some jail time, total estrangement from his family but nary a hair less charming.

Along with Linda and her crew of kids, he spent a few days in our home. He was among those who cane into the restaurant early to eat, to loan me a sense of safety. He had a vague story or two about his present situation, but he appeared sober (read, ‘appeared’). I was genuinely glad to see him; we all love him.

 

Men of our church provided him with work he needed. Sensing the odds but ignoring the reality, I gave Monte my little paycheck form the restaurant to help pay for a technical school course. Naturally, I should have mailed the check to the school. Hindsight = 20/20. It was to Monte’s great disadvantage that our family lacked discernment about the difference between leaning and using. He desperately needed someone with bold, street-smart awareness to confront his manipulative skills. We didn’t have that yet.

 

My urging Monte to noble character when his own was so wounded as akin to urging a three-legged dog to walk on all fours. They both suffer more from “cannot” than “will not.” But, Monte left, the Pine men returned from canoeing, and Linda’s clan returned to Colorado. Monte was arrested a couple of days later, the called our home after a few days in jail.

 

“Hello Mom,” came his resilient voice. “I’m leaving in five minutes. Your check is in my hand; it’s not going fore anything but school.”

 

Often users, like dieters, sincerely mean to do well. Who knows the real line or the real struggle between “cannot” and “will not”? A summer or so later, a born-again Monte called from a distant state. Monte who, yes, had cashed my check but never reached school. He was in drug rehabilitation, he said. We hoped so. We have not heard again.

 

In a San Francisco art exhibit, hanging beside a landscape painting done by Pissarro in 1876, I read this critic’s comment:

    “Seen up close [Pissarro’s landscapes] are incomprehensible and hideous; seen from a distance they are hideous and incomprehensible.”

 

Whether the art critic was correct matters little to me. I am not a great Pissarro fan. Only, the comment expresses how I feel about “using.” No matter how you look at it, no matter the patience you apply to it, you can turn it in any light, at any angle, and you will always see the same thing—complete self-concern. Using is hideous and incomprehensible, not because the deeds involved are necessarily evil but because they are completely self-serving. For whatever reason, users require and request but do not restore and reciprocate.

 

Conclusion:

Leaners are people who trust that the healthiest state of individualism is individualism within community. They know that reciprocation is not an emergency behavior but an excellent one; that a slight tilt produces rest, not exploitation. Jack Smith wrote in the L.A. Timesabout a flight attendant who served a great American boxing champion aboard her flight.

“Please fasten your seatbelt,” she said, noticing that he hadn’t.

“Superman don’t need no seatbelt,” he replied.

“Superman don’t need no airplane,” she responded in a flash. 

 

That is truth in a nutshell. Superman don’t need nothin’ but a phone booth. But unless we are above the human situation, we will at ties need to lean. Rigid independence deserves no bouquets.

 

I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment . . . we are members of one another . . . Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty,  . . . do not claim to be wiser than you are.

 

So says the New Testament in the twelfth chapter (vv.3, 5, 16 NRSV) of Romans. The passage encourages community by discouraging unrealistic individualism. Real people must face up to needs and limitations. They swallow pride and allow others to support. They lean. Straighten up? Not always.

 

Coming up: Chapter FIVE - LOANING

Tough stuff—to give yourself voluntarily, no strings attached . . . Wheeeew

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