Chapter 21

^” I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” —Ezekiel 36:26

 Roma reinserted himself effortlessly back into his community where he had left off two years earlier, ignoring the difficult couple of years. I was more than willing to forget them too. Being an extreme extrovert, Roma was happiest hanging out with people, asserting his personality. Seven-year-old Roma was declaring his will and bossing us around before he could speak English 14 years earlier.  This mode of operation never waned, except that he became very articulate in English. He never met a stranger. Most people in the community knew and loved Roma.

When he was welcomed home as the returning celebrity by the community in October, he revived his people skills. He reconnected with friends with whom he had lost touch, and he went out of his way to greet adults he had known all his life in America.

“Come here, I need a hug from a pretty woman,” Roma would approach elderly women who had watched him grow up. It was as if he slipped right back into the role of being the kid everyone loved. He hugged all adults he hadn’t seen for a while and made time to respectfully interacted with them, rightfully acknowledging their importance in his life. Roma had a gift of making people feel like they were his favorite.  

He even hung out with us occasionally. Roma was home, enjoying the benefits and safety and love of his family.  

Often when he planned to be home for dinner, he would come close to me, hang his arm around my neck and say, “Mom,” like he had just had a great idea. “You wanna fix me some potatoes?”  Of course, I did.

Potatoes were always Roma’s favorite comfort food. The first evening seven-year-old Roma arrived at our house like a pinball on steroids, he was going through the refrigerator once we finally confined him to the kitchen. He found potatoes in the bottom drawer. “Patoshka!” he said delightedly, standing up, holding one treasured find in each hand. I was more than happy to fix this man-child of 21 his cherished fried potatoes.  I would sit, happy to engage in conversation with him, before a friend came to fetch him until curfew.

Roma was trying to save money for a reliable used car and insurance. Weekly he handed me a wad of bills from his handy-man helper job, asking me to add it to his car fund. Then he would borrow some back for an outing with his friends. Sometimes the car fund was barely enough to cover the activity fund, but I didn’t fret. Roma was staying busy. He played volleyball on Monday nights, basketball on Thursday nights, pick-up games of basketball and football when he could entice enough friends to play, as well as working. He hardly had time for misbehaving!

He registered to play on a “semi pro” football team. Those practices were on Sunday afternoons. I got to drive him to practice too, sometimes, and pick him up. His chauffeuring needs were substantial and exhausting.  “Mom, remember, you said God said our time in the car was precious,” he would remind me if he sensed my annoyance with his extensive traveling.  That was enough to snap my heart back to a condition of gratitude and patience.

Roma was euphoric about football. He had played quarterback starting at age 12, and continued through little league and public high school, but at Fork Union, he switched to be a receiver, starting on the offense. He also played defense as a defensive back. He was All League for his hustling wide receiver skills.  A newspaper in Virginia had named him as one of the Dynamic Duo with his quarterback.

Roma’s early exit from Fork Union, six weeks prior to graduation in 2013 because of multiple tobacco infractions and uncharacteristic disrespect put him into a tailspin and brought his hopes of a small college football career to a pause. Now, here in 2015, he was on a team again.

 “Mom, I’m so excited to be playing football again,” he would say as he held his arms and fists close to his chest, as if trying to keep himself from exploding from pure joy. And I was genuinely pleased for him. And about him. Sweet Roma was back, the same enthusiastic boy he had been, before the boredom and rebellion of the teen years dulled his bright spirit. There was an innocence, an otherworldliness about Roma that scared me. What will become of ethereal Roma, I often wondered? But I pushed all fear aside because fear is always the enemy.

I watched him with curiosity and listened with interest as he talked about his dreams for his future. His physical beauty was mesmerizing. He was always a beautiful child, now a handsome man. I was captivated by the symmetry of his striking face, his manly stubble. When did he lose his soft fuzz? When had his rosy complexion and freckles transitioned to that of a man? His dark wavy hair, and his dancing green eyes, so full of hope and promise. His enthusiasm was contagious—I could hardly contain my heart from hoping, praying this time was different.

About three weeks into Roma’s homecoming, a close friend was visiting and asked how our reunion with Roma was going. She had loved her new little neighbor since he first joined us in 2002, and she was painfully aware of all the challenges of the past few years. She knew I had some trepidation about his return, fearful the pattern of coming and going, of hope and disappointment would repeat itself. I told her how his last six months away from the family had seemed to have finally matured him, that I was more hopeful this time. When I said he was working with a handyman—landscaping, cleaning gutters, repairing roofs—she grimaced. 

“You know roofing is a very dangerous job.” She watched me closely to insure I was listening carefully to her warning.  “An astounding number of people die falling from ladders.”

Her husband was a builder, and she worked in the business end of the construction industry, so she knew well the dangers of the trade. 

I was stunned. I had never considered Roma’s life being at risk on the job. He had made plenty of bad choices on his free time, but I considered him safe at work. My shoulders slumped as I considered this new risk. My friend, who had watched strong-willed Roma grow up next door, and I both recognized I had no power to insist he change jobs. I had tried, for my own convenience, before accepting his commute as our sacred time. I did recognize that Roma’s many people skills weren’t being fully utilized at this job, but it was a means to a need-of-money ends. It was temporary. But suddenly I was obsessed with his safety. “Roma, you need to find another job,” I told him during the next drive to work. “Working on roofs is a very dangerous job.”

“Mom, don’t be negative. I’m learning a lot and making money. My boss is going south for a few weeks in the winter, so I’ll probably have to get another job then. But I’m fine for now,” he tried to quell my fears. Maybe I was overreacting. 

A few days later on our morning drive to work, Roma was tying his shoelaces on his boots when I heard one snap. 

“Roma!” I said, louder than I intended. “You can’t climb a ladder with broken shoelaces. You’ll trip.”

“Mom, chill,” Roma almost yelled back. “You’re scaring me! You know how superstitious I am. Now I probably will fall.”

“No, don’t say that.” I tried to calm us both. “Tie the ends together well and tuck them into your boot. And be very careful We’ll get new laces tonight.” 

I had to stop my negative thoughts. The past months, and even years, I’d been able to hand Roma over to God for His protection. I was able to put aside worry. Now that he was home and seemed to be doing so well, finally, why couldn’t I stop fretting about him. Did I truly believe what I claimed to believe about God’s providential power? I wasn’t proving to be a very credible witness! I had to lay Roma down, and trust God, again.  

But the niggling worry didn’t subside. Stubborn Roma! I should have used the reverse psychology that so often worked on him by telling him I thought roofing was the perfect job for him, that I hoped he’d be doing it for the rest of his life. That would have raised his hackles, and he would have proven me wrong. 

My strong-willed boy exasperated me.  A year earlier, he had fought me for control over every aspect of his life. I had remained calm, remembering that Roma had always been God’s boy first, and if I worried, it meant I didn’t trust God. Just as Abraham had laid down his cherished son Isaac to obey God’s instruction, I had laid down my cherished Roma before God, again, and again, and again. I put Roma in God’s care realizing I had no power to make him do what I wanted, or to make him act in his own best interests. A year earlier, I had told Roma what should have been a relief to him, that I would no longer place expectations on him; he could live life his way. But I knew my boy would not appreciate that release.

He looked at me with obvious sadness and said, “Mom, that is mean.”

I knew my resignation would trouble Roma. But he couldn’t have it both ways. He thrived on my high expectations of him that were quite reasonable considering his many talents. He never suffered from low self-esteem. He had insisted on living life his way, and he had failed.  Now, in November 2015, a transformed son seemed to live in our midst. I was overcome with gratitude.

One night Roma and I were talking about his stagnant car fund. He was borrowing back as much as he was contributing. We were sitting at the kitchen table, and I was giving him some solid financial advice, which I did regularly.  And usually he seemed eager, or at least willing to understand.

“Mom.” He always started his contemplative comments with “Mom,” maybe to get my attention.  “Why do I even need to learn to save money?”

His remark sent alarms off in my heart. Was he sliding back into irresponsible behavior? But it scared me beyond that possibility.

I explained the obvious, that everyone needs to get into a habit of not spending every single penny they make, that we all need a reserve, in case of emergencies. Somehow his query made my heart ache.

Roma was an innocent. Would he ever get it? He just wanted to play ball and hang out with his friends. He didn’t even notice when someone didn’t like him or disrespected him.  Roma wasn’t capable of being offended. If he got angry with his family or with a friend, he reached out quickly to apologize and make peace again. 

The next day after delivering him to his destination, I was praying for him in my dark pray closet. I wanted him to save his money. I wanted him to consider going back to school. I wanted him to find a new job. I wanted him to be a functioning member of society.  I wanted him to use his considerable gifts. I wanted him to surrender his control to God. I wanted that for myself. I wanted a lot. I could hardly think of what Roma wanted for himself. Surely we both wanted the same thing—for him to have a have a successful and satisfying life and a genuine faith in God.

I encouraged him to communicate more with his sister Liana, as much for her broken heart as for his. Now her welfare concerned me. After the first conversation during the last days of 2014, Roma seemed satisfied to have discovered Liana was alive and happy, with two sons of her own. But she seemed so distant from his seven-year-old memory, as if he had swum to safety on one side of a great divide, as she faded into obscurity on the other side. He never expected to encounter her again, and he had had to learn to live with that loss to move forward. Otherwise, he would have been stuck, treading water in a vast emptiness. Currently, she might as well be living on Mars; trying to communicate through the awkwardness of online translating seemed an insurmountable barrier to Roma. It was too slow and cumbersome, not a natural or spontaneous flow. I pleaded with him to reach out to her, but he put me off every time I mentioned it. She seemed to be more of a stranger to him than she was to me.

“Mom, I’m too emotional about it right now. I’m glad she’s okay. I can’t think about it today. One day, I promise, we will go visit. One day.”

I could hardly force him, although my heart ached for Liana, Aunt Lia, and the eager cousins, people I had grown to love. For now, he was satisfied to just play football, or basketball, to hang out with friends and work to fund those simple joys. How could I complain when he was so engaged and filled with joy?

There in my prayer closet, failing to be still and struggling to accept that God is God, I fretted about God’s most surprising and cherished gift to me—Roma. 

“What will become of Roma?” I asked God aloud. Suddenly I had a startling thought. Almost a picture. A quick movement in the dark. Was it a vision? Although I sat on an ottoman in complete darkness, I saw, or imagined Roma falling right in front of me, from a tall ladder. And he was gone. Dead. I sat in my dark closet sobbing over my day dream.

“How could I ever live without dear Roma?” I asked the universe.

I gathered my composure, got out of that closet, and immediately chided myself for my vivid imagination. That’s all it was, right? Lord, I prayed, please protect him, and don’t let me despair.

I had to stop this senseless worrying.

Continue with Chapter 22