Roger’s fame propelled him into a whirlwind of audacious adulation. He had fans. As his life got ever-so-much-more interesting and complicated, he grew increasingly distant from us. His Facebook feed piled up with beautiful book covers of Ghostman translations, published in German, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Spanish, and many other languages. There was the trip to London when he received the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller as the youngest author (at age 23) to receive the award. Then there was the Strand Critics Award for best first novel, and the Maltese Falcon Society Award for Best Hardboiled Novel.

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Suddenly, Roger was rich.

 

Everything was possible.

 

Unlike most of our peers whose children were still dependent on them financially, Roger had no need for parents anymore. We had few opportunities to talk with him. It was impossible to have a dialogue about meaningful things like how he was feeling, or how his relationships were changing, or how he was managing his money. Phone calls and emails went unanswered, month after month.

 

We had been abandoned.

 

Panic began to set it. When I did get a call with him, it probably didn’t help that I would blurt out questions like “Have you seen a therapist?” or “Have you set up a retirement account?” or “Have you hired a financial advisor?”  We got equivocal or dismissive responses.

 

Roger did not have to humor us.

 

“Mom, really,” Roger sighed heavily in one call. “I paid more in taxes last year that you made all year long.”

As part of the plan for book #2, Roger travelled to Macau to research the Asian gambling scene. With all his newfound wealth, he decided to take a first-hand look at how other cultures do crime. Travelling to the south of China, he gambled with mobsters, went drinking with drug dealers, and cased jewelry stores like a burglar. He wandered through the slums --- and stayed at some very nice hotels. Of course, Roger began to gamble.

Roger like to explain the similarities between playing poker and the writing process. He once said, “Players don’t win or lose based on the quality of their cards, but on their ability to convince other players that their hand is good or bad. Bluffing is the central skill in writing fiction. Both poker players and writers tell lies for money, essentially, and have a lot of fun doing it.”

    

The giant superiority complex he had developed in high school had metastasized. I was proud of Roger’s literary accomplishments. But underneath it all, I was also terrified. My response to Roger’s fame was dread, a kind of eats-away-at-you fear that’s hard to explain.  After reading Ghostman, I experienced a kind of chronic anxiety about Roger’s new life that I did my best to ignore.

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Avoid and deny. Like I do when the going gets tough.

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Because I could no longer interact with my son, I obsessed over how he described his life in magazine interviews and listened intently to podcasts where he was featured. There was this thrum of anxiety that threaded itself into my head. It was always present.

 

The need to connect with my son intensified. When the opportunity arose to spend time with him, I took it. What was my excuse for going to the West Coast? Was it for a consulting gig? Was I giving a conference paper? Making a keynote speech or a workshop? It doesn’t matter: I was going to visit him.

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A couple of months in advance of the trip, I emailed Roger to let him know that I would be on the West Coast on a certain date and would love to stop in to visit him in Portland for a little visit. He agreed and we made plans to have dinner together with him and Lara in Portland. I sent him my itinerary. Perhaps we would take a stroll around Powell’s Book Store or watch a movie. It would be just a weekend get together. I booked the flight and made plans to stay at the Heathman Hotel, the charming early 20th century hotel made of brick and stone, with decorative details in the Jacobean Revival style, dark wood paneling oozing with charm.

 

Only three hours before my plane was scheduled to depart from San Francisco for Portland, the email arrived.

“Mom, I’m not going to be able to meet with you this weekend. I’m going to Las Vegas with a few friends,” he wrote.

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I re-read the email, feeling crushed. Empty inside. Heartbroken and abandoned. Guilty. Angry. Hurt.

​

Roger had decided to leave Portland for the weekend just as I was arriving to see him. He was ditching his old mom to hang out with his new friends. There I was, en route to the airport, when the email arrived. I could feel the hot tears of shame well up inside me.

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I had been rejected by my only son.

 

I left him a disappointed, angry voice mail telling him I was getting on the plane, hoping against hope that things would work out.

 

It was grey and rainy when I arrived in Portland. I got into a taxi at the airport, watching the skies pelt down rain, etching patterns in the window, and blurring the cityscape views of bridges, river, and buildings.

No message from Roger. I cried in my hotel room for whole the first evening, morosely flipping from one cable TV channel to the next, feeling sorry for myself. The next day, I texted Roger and reminded him that I was in Portland, alone in the city without him.

 

As my mind cycled between anger, sadness, and regret, I tried to push these terrible feelings aside. I directed my emotions toward my own inadequacies. Self-loathing came forward center stage. I was a bad mom --and this was Roger’s payback for my sins.

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I found myself wandering around the city, studying the runes of the sidewalk, imagining a rational set of reasons why this distressing, traumatic experience had occurred. I was the mother of a son who felt the need to both hurtful and clueless. What had I done to deserve this?

 

I could not see Roger as heartless and insensitive. So as the awful feelings of rejection swirled around me, I breathed in Portland’s cloudy moistness. It was my fault. My sense of shame was overpowering that weekend.

In my mind, I rehearsed phone calls to Roger where I expressed my anger, resentment, and disappointment. But what good could expressing my disappointment do? Roger had already pushed me out of his life.

 

Alone in that Portland hotel room, I found myself desperate to bury my feelings. I found myself wondering how I could erase the memory of the weekend. Perhaps I could forget the whole thing on purpose. After all, there are steps that you can take to lessen a memory's emotional impact. Walking through the city in the rain, my feet wet and cold, I headed to the movie theater to take solace in some alternative reality.

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After the movie, my identity dissolved as I walked, umbrella in hand, watching the rain spatter across the dark sidewalks and puddles, as I walked back to the hotel.  Deep currents of love and sorrow roiled around me as I pondered my life, my parenting, my unknowable son, and his life choices. My determinedly productive life evaporated as I deteriorated that rainy night, reviewing scenes from my life as I unspooled one inadequacy after another.  I was a mess.

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As I boarded the airplane to return home, I had to consider what to say about this awful weekend to Roger’s sister, his dad, his grandmother, and my own friends.

 

Every part of the story was pathetic.

 

And what could I say?

 

All my friends and family would undoubtedly ask about my weekend. I could choose to lie or tell the truth about the experience. Perhaps I could hide the details of my pathetic, lonely weekend in Portland.

Telling the truth did not seem like an option.

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Plus, my sad story would also certainly soil the image of my dear son in their minds. Everyone would know what a bad parent I had been. After all, my own selfish ways led my own son to turn away from me. It was my fault that Roger rejected me.

 

When I returned home, the first thing I did was to spend time with my mom on Cape Cod. I can’t remember exactly what I told her, but I remember getting a long hug from her. I remember trying my best not to cry.

Always the English teacher, she retreated to her home office, and pulled out a book of poetry. She handed me a poem entitled, “For Julia in the Deep Water,” where a parent struggles emotionally as she watches her child learn to swim. 

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“Our children’s growing up is a torture to their parents,” my mom said.

 

“You’re getting back what you gave me. You pushed me out of your life when you went to Harvard at age 23,” she said. “You made choices, you made mistakes, you learned from them.”

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So I sensed some weird generational dynamic of control and rejection in the practice of parenting a young adult child. Was I learning the hardest thing about parenting? What was so impossibly hard about learning to stand back and do nothing as your children (at any age) enter that deep water? All I could do, no matter what, is keep loving him.