A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.
~Frank A. Clark

It was the summer of 1991 when we stopped having fun. My thirteen-year-old son was spending vacation with me. We were heading out on a backpacking trip, driving along a bumpy section of dirt road in the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, searching for the trailhead. Micah was playing one of his rap tapes. The music was loud, a rhythmic rattle of pounded metal slammed to the background by industrial-strength guitar chords. The song was about shooting cops and holding up 7-Eleven stores. I distinctly heard the singer scream the f-word. I hit the eject button.

“Let’s see if we can find a different song,” I said.

Micah did not enjoy having his music evaluated by me, and he let it be known. I let it be known right back that I did not intend to listen to that kind of trash in my car. It was the first day of vacation and we were already at odds with one another.

As the week wore on the situation grew worse. Micah complained about the food, griped about camp chores and argued when I tried to have a simple conversation with him. When he wasn’t arguing with me, he simply wasn’t speaking.

I would like to blame our ruined camping trip on my son’s poor taste in music, but that was only a small part of the problem. He had arrived for the summer looking as committed to bad times as a death-row convict. He was skinnier than when I saw him last and his hair had been cut in some new, dopey-looking, punk style. Micah wore a permanent scowl and walked with his shoulders slumped. When I spoke to him, he rolled his eyes and gave me a why-don’t-you-get-off-my-back look, which would become habitual.

To say that my son withdrew from me that year would have been the greatest of understatements. He disappeared in all ways but physically, his personality vanishing so completely it was as if his life suddenly went on remote control.

Was this the same boy who had visited me last year? The vulnerable and sincere child who respected his parents, worked hard in school, and loved sports? The caring kid who enjoyed nature and brought home stray animals on a regular basis? Was this my child? And if so, how did he change so fast?

That summer turned out to be only the beginning of my son’s troubles. Over the next several years his behavior would travel way beyond the pall of wise-guyism or healthy adolescent rebellion. Micah would run away from home, overdose on drugs, and spend countless hours in counseling. His mother would change their phone number, then their address, then her place of employment and the city in which they lived. She would do that so many times in a fruitless search for a safe, drug-free neighborhood. And I would dump my son’s entire college savings on a private school that specialized in dealing with troubled kids, only to watch him be expelled after only one week for unruly behavior.

During those adolescent years Micah would flunk out of a dozen schools and be kicked out of a dozen more. He would run counter to all authority, roaming at will in and out of his mother’s house, moving through life as if it were little more than an extended trip to the mall, picking through it for drugs and parties.

And I would be stranded almost a thousand miles away, wondering what was happening to my son. Was he still alive? And if he was alive, was he already out of reach? Would he ever turn his life around, or would he simply turn into another street bum and kill himself with an overdose of drugs? God only knows, right?

Who was to blame for Micah’s problems? I had no idea. I wanted to help my son. I wanted to tell him to get off drugs, go back to school and start showing his mother respect. I wanted to instruct him to stop acting like a spoiled child and start acting like a man. I wanted to say all those things and more, but during our short time together I tried not to quiz or anger Micah.

I remembered before the divorce, when we were a family and Micah was playing in the yard and stumbled over a yellow-jacket nest. I was in the garage when I heard him cry. I ran out to find yellow jackets swarming around him like an angry halo. I ran to him, swatting at the wasps with my hands, picking them off his skin and hair. He’d been stung a dozen times and I was stung numerous times myself. We ran into the house and slammed the door shut.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” I had told him that day, nine years earlier. I spoke those same words, willing Micah and myself to believe them as we drove home from our camping trip. Back to civilization and whatever would await us.

It’s a natural instinct for a father to want to save his son. Which is to say when a boy begins to tumble at a headlong rate, a father feels it is his duty to catch him before he reaches bottom. But I was unable to provide that help. My parenting was limited to a few weeks of summer vacation. I would suffer Micah’s problems with him once a year and then watch him depart.

It took a long time, but my son did turn his life around. At age nineteen he became involved in a church group. Not long after that he gave up drugs, went back to school and got his GED. He began taking better care of himself and eating right.

Today, Micah is a far healthier, happier version of his old self. He cares about life and about those around him. He graduated from college and works for a non-profit organization, feeding homeless people.

It may not seem like much to parents with children who have led more conventional lives, but to me Micah’s transformation was a true miracle. My son went to the edge and didn’t like what he saw. I’m so thankful he decided to come back.

~Timothy Martin