I never doubted I was a good parent.

Even during Jacob’s darkest days, I never thought I was in any way a “bad” mother.

Mostly.

When therapists told me addiction happens in the best of families, to children of the best parents, I tried hard to believe them.

But that didn’t stop the ruminating.  What had I done wrong?  Or what hadn’t I done right enough?

Once I began Al-Anon, I took some comfort in the repeated admonition:  you didn’t cause it.  You can’t control it.  And you can’t cure it.

I believed the second two.  But the cause?

For years I asked why and sought the reason for my son’s abusing drugs.

Had I loved him enough?

Were dinners at home together with his father and me often enough?  Long enough?  Did I serve him the foods he loved, enough?

At night, did I linger by his bedside?  Ask about his day?  Listen about his day? Encourage him for the next?

Were there enough times when we sat together and said nothing?  Did I look into his hazel eyes deeply enough to read the signs, to see the inner turmoil, to offer him a refuge in mine?

Therapists who surely must be far wiser than I tell me to quit it.  Wondering “why” is worthless.  A waste of time and loving.

How often does Jacob himself say, “Mom, it wasn’t about you.  It wasn’t about anything you did.”

Still, despite nearly 13 years of his recovery and mine, in the soft, muted, occasional moment, like when I watch a young boy sitting on a city dock bench next to his mother, the two of them talking, I wonder…

How often had I sat like that with my son?

And was it enough?