I am seated at an outdoor café lunching with a friend after several months’ absence.

We barely scan the menu before the talk turns to our children, and then their peers.

These are the now grown kids we both watched in the high school marching band, on the outdoor track, in the auditorium at back-to-school nights.

Inevitably, my friend drops her voice.

One of the boys, today in his 30s, is – well, you know, in Utah or Colorado.  His family just sent him there.  He’s still having “that problem.”

It’s been decades since our boys were in class together….and more than a full decade that my son has been clean and sober, AND helping others to achieve the same.

Still, she drops her voice.  Might the men in open-collar shirts at the next table overhear us?  Or the server who delivers our iced tea?

Sometimes the shame of addiction is exhausting.

I am as bored and “done” with it as the egg salad I order every time.

But I don’t challenge my friend.

After all, maybe this young man and his family are protecting their privacy.

Weeks ago the President’s son was found guilty of a gun charge related to his sad, years-long story of substance abuse.

For him there is no such privacy.  The pathos of a family yearning for their child’s healthy future plays out on the front page of every newspaper.

Jill and Joe Biden hold up their heads and love their son.

I am no different.

I too want my son to live a drug-free, healthy, wholesome life, as he does today.

Like them, I will neither hide from addiction nor cower under shame.  Instead, I will love and trust my son.

Over lunch, or any other meal.