Suspended Sentence: A Memoir

By Janice Morgan

When Janice Morgan, a divorced college professor living in a small town in Kentucky, learns that her son has been arrested for possession of a stolen firearm and drug charges, she feels like she’s living a nightmare. Dylan’s turbulent period as a college student in Cincinnati before this should have warned her, but it’s only now that she realizes how far he has drifted into substance abuse and addiction. As Dylan passes through the judicial system and eventually receives a diversion to drug court, Morgan breathes a sigh of relief—only to find that she, too, has been sentenced right along with him. In the months to follow, she leads a double life: part of it on campus, the rest embarking upon what she calls “rescue missions” to help Dylan stay in the program. But resilience, dark humor, and extreme parenting can only carry you so far. Eventually, Morgan discovers that she needs to gain a deeper understanding of the bipolar and addiction issues her son is dealing with. Will each of them be able to learn fast enough to face these complexities in their lives? Clearly, Dylan isn’t the only one who has recovery work to do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781631526459

Janice Morgan

Janice Morgan formerly taught courses in language, literature, and cultural history as a college teacher in rural Kentucky. During that career, she wrote about social issues in French cinema, publishing in The French Review, Cinema Journal, and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Based on her family’s experiences, she now advocates for better mental health awareness, substance abuse recovery, and criminal justice reform.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: THE BOY

At this time of year, the sunlight falls at a lower slant into the living room in broad swaths of gold. When that happens, the sun sends shadows of the tulip poplar leaves outside to dance inside on the brightness of the wood floor. These are always a signal of time passing: changing leaves, crickets singing at night in the tall grasses, dry wood smoke—memories.

The shifting light sends me back to my photo album, searching for the three photos of my son at eleven years old. I think back to that summer afternoon in ‘99.

Somewhere during those first couple of years of being a divorced single parent, I remember thinking, Look at your son. He’s going to change soon, become a whole different person. He’ll suddenly grow tall, his face will change, his voice will deepen, hair will grow. In no time at all, you’ll barely recognize him. I was thinking of other friends’ kids, young persons I had known for years and then didn’t see for a while before suddenly catching sight of them at the bank or at an event in town. They’d be standing with their parents as tall, totally transformed teenagers, persons who held only a faint resemblance to the children I had so easily recognized before through their years of steadily inching upward. Then, seemingly overnight, the slowly munching caterpillar turned into this new, winged creature who was returning my gaze from new heights. It would happen to my son, too. By age eighteen, the unimaginable would have taken place. That’s why I would sometimes steal a watchful look at him at dinner, noticing his child’s cheeks, round and pink from the sun, his throat encircled by a macramé necklace, the skin so fine it looked like a girl’s, his eyes—those long lashes. Well, the lashes might stay, but the rest, it was going to change for sure. I just didn’t know how yet.

I page through the album to look at other photos from this time in Dylan’s life. There are photos of him negotiating curves and waves on the BMX track. Then, after the race, standing tall with his trophies. There are photos of Dylan taking summer trips with his dad somewhere in a deep forest, Dylan crossing a log high above a creek. Photos of Dylan in his new clothes from Grandpa and Grandma, practicing tricks with a brightly colored yo-yo before showing them to a crowd. These were all photo ops; he was performing. But it was around that same time that I felt it was important to capture my son at a before moment, when he was still a child. I wanted to hold on to those moments. One day, rather than choosing a particular event to record like a photojournalist, I tried something different.

I kept my camera undercover. Then, as my son twirled around in our living room at a time when we weren’t doing anything in particular, I quickly took three candid shots. For once, he’s not flashing a goofy smile or taking up his look at me bravura pose. Instead, his gaze is averted. He’s looking at something else across the room, maybe something that’s not even there. The photos catch him somewhere in mid-daydream flight. In the third shot, he’s looking down pensively, his head tilted, almost as if in question. It must have been summer. He’s wearing a t-shirt that’s a bit big on him, and his hair is moist from sweat on his forehead. Probably he’s just come in from outside. I remember the heat of his compact body, his torpedo rushes of energy and emotion, the stories he would tell.

These are the three photos I stare at now, trying to go back in time. I wonder what he was seeing then. I study his face, so different from the face of the young man he is now. Isn’t there a hint of loneliness I didn’t notice at the time? Something I missed? And there I was all the while, so confident he was an open book, telling me everything. Of course, he did tell me most of what he knew when he was eleven years old. I believed then that he and I were going to traverse the realm of teen years together. We would cross the threshold into his adulthood side by side like other parents and their kids: ball games, trips, vacations, diplomas, proms, plans. Now, though, I wonder about all the things he didn’t tell me. Would I have been open to hear them if he had? There would have been much he couldn’t even put into words yet. Just as neither of us knew how, exactly, the terrain would change ahead of us. That boy is gone now, but I want so much to be able to go back and find him: to see him again, talk to him. Even just for those hours and days. And I wonder what I could have done differently.

CHAPTER 2: BOMBSHELL

When I hung up the phone, I knew I had to get my hands on today’s newspaper. I pulled on my jacket and walked up to the local Walgreens. As soon as I got there, I could see where they were, right next to the checkout counter. I glanced at the date, June 16, 2011, and the large front-page photo. A young blonde was placing a rhinestone tiara on the local county fair queen. Nope, that wasn’t what I was looking for, but the date was right and I knew there would be another story inside. Allison Marie had just called to tell me so. Rather than just dive on the paper and rifle through the pages, I thought it would be better to maintain some everyday nonchalance. I drifted into the cosmetics racks, scanning rainbow rows of nail polish. I decided on one and made my way casually to the counter, remembering—as if at the last moment—to pick up a newspaper to add to my total. I tucked the bag under my arm and strode home quickly to read the bad news in private.

Spreading out the newspaper to its full size, I immediately found the article I was looking for. It was on the front page after all, just lower down. CPD charge man with cultivation, the title read, with a color photo of flourishing marijuana plants being grown in a large indoor planter box. The story continued on the next page, along with a mug shot of the young man in question, his last name under the shot along with his age, twenty-three. He had been arrested a few days earlier on a tip from an acquaintance that he’d been waving a gun around while drinking at their apartment. Then he’d fired it upwards on a whim when friends dropped him off in his apartment’s parking lot. He was later charged with wanton endangerment and possessing a stolen firearm. Several days later, the police came with a warrant to search his apartment for another gun they suspected he had but didn’t find. However, they did discover the illegal plants growing behind one of the walls. This story would be only vaguely curious to me if I had just happened to stumble across it, if someone else were the subject of the story. But this was excruciating. The guy in the mug shot was my son.

Of course, since the night he was arrested, I had already learned all the information conveyed by the paper. When I found out about the firearm, I was horrified. My son with a gun! No one in my family used firearms. When Blaine, the apartment manager, told me about the police coming to search the apartment, he said I might want to be there, so I was, waiting in the dark parking lot while several officers tromped upstairs and spent considerable time rummaging around. When they finally came down, each one had an armload of planter boxes and leafy plants to be loaded into a truck. Yep, it was a clandestine marijuana installation, that’s what they called it. The rest I could read in the newspaper or find out in court.

Way beyond the cold facts, what the phone call from Allison Marie drove home for me (and what the newspaper article made crystal clear) was that my son and my family were all out there in the wind now, exposed. My son was a criminal. He was in jail on felony charges. He’d had infractions before, but nothing this bad. By extension, we were all scandalous social outcasts—or so I felt. This was not supposed to happen to mild-mannered, liberal-arts-college-professor parents, even if they were divorced like I was. Especially not if you were a college professor living in a small, conservative town in west Kentucky that takes pride in strong family values and community spirit. By all rights, my kid should have straight A’s, be on the honor roll, and maybe even be one of those young princes in a tuxedo dancing with the tiara-crowned princesses. But no, here it was in black and white. My son had definitely set himself into the renegade category of society, and now with this latest episode, it was all out there, with me plunged knee-deep right into the mess as his mom.

Closing the newspaper pages, my cheeks were burning. I felt scorched by the shame of it. I heard Rev. Allison Marie’s voice over the phone again: It’s always that way in a small town. And everybody’s going to be talking about it. She had spoken to me for a long while in her calm, reassuring voice. She was the co-vicar, along with her husband Rev. Patrick, at the local Episcopalian church, St. Alban the Martyr, and she wanted me to know others had gone through this and survived. I would make it; I had support, she said. But today I wasn’t so sure. How could I sustain such a massive breach of my security? Any cover I ever had was blown. The wildcat was out of the bag, the unruly horse miles away from the barn. This was no minor infraction, nothing you could patch up quickly and move on. Fortunately, it was summer, so I didn’t have to prepare classes. But was there no cave I could hide in for a while? Mammoth Caves weren’t too far away, and I had never visited them. Or how about a quick trip to the West Coast to visit Uncle Albert, just until the storm blew over? Of course, even as I was fantasizing about this, I knew I’d have to stay right here in Croftburg; there would be a lot to do to follow this through. But just allowing myself to think of a possible escape far, far away helped me get through the day. Allison Marie had told me to come over if I felt like it. We could sit on their deck in the evening sometime and chat, an offer I was sure to take up soon.

Meanwhile, the reactions from others didn’t prove to be nearly as painful as I feared. During the week, only a few of my colleagues ever mentioned it. They would wait for a private moment, then let me know they had read the article, waiting for me to respond, to see what my reaction was or if I had a story. I would sigh, shrug, and shake my head. That was my only official statement for the moment. I felt their concern; they respected my silence. One or two told me in hushed tones about a court case that their cousin, a nephew, or their daughter had to face—but their tales weren’t anything as serious as this. Not three felony charges all at once! No, I kept the lid down tight on the firestorm inside.

CHAPTER 3: TIME OUT

The next day dawned cool and sunny. Normally, I would have noticed the beauty of such a morning, but recent events had disabled all my beauty sensors. For a while now, I’d noticed this pattern. Whenever I woke up after a life-altering incident, there would be a split-second of benign, sheltering fog, then—like a thunder clap—the new reality would strike me.

You’ve just broken up with your boyfriend!

Your marriage is over!

Your son is in jail!

That’s when I’d realize that I must have actually fallen asleep, finally, the night before … but now I was awake. A deep dread would set in. My stomach would start to churn like the back end of a garbage truck. Still, I’d go downstairs and prepare breakfast mechanically. It’s not that I was actually hungry, but I had to keep a ritualized schedule for myself, go through the motions. Pretend it was going to be some kind of a normal day. Most of all, drink strong coffee and get my bearings.

Mid-June already. More than high time to get the garden in. I’d been putting it off now for a few weeks. First there had been the press of final exams to make up and grade, then the trip to Boston. Then, just when I should have been easing into a more relaxed summer work pattern … nope, I fell into full catastrophe mode. I was sad, angry, confused. My son just ruined his life! How will he ever get through college now? How will he have a career? Well, I couldn’t just sit and stew about it. Time to head for my community garden plot.

I’m a true garden warrior. Gardening is in my blood because my parents and grandparents were gardeners. Just about everything I know about working with dirt, seed, and plants I learned as a little kid, playing alongside them while they toiled under clear Minnesota skies. My mom was from Blue Earth county, and trust me, people in her generation knew a thing or two about how to grow things in that rich black soil. Before setting off, like them, I have a whole ritual I observe: special clothes, special tools. After donning my old jeans with multiple pockets, armed with my hoe, rake, and spade, I feel like Roland at Roncevaux, mounting his horse with his sword, Durendal, by his side. The steel blade has a special name because it’s one of his best friends. That’s the way I set off for the garden.

I knew my principal aim was to get the soil in shape. I set down my basket alongside the tools and put on my battered, leather garden gloves. It was going to be a mano a terra combat. I gazed at the garden plot, not without some dismay. If I had done this earlier, right after our chief garden organizer had done the tilling, my job would be much easier. Since then, there had been a rain or two, and some grasses and weeds were cropping up. I would have to get rid of those with the hoe, then use it—or maybe even the spade—to break up the heavy clay soil again into smaller chunks. I knew the ideal was to get the soil fine and almost siftable, like flour for making bread. The finer the soil, the easier for tiny roots to grow into. Hum, we’ll see about that; at least the clay was reasonably dry by then. That was one good thing. And it wasn’t too hot yet. That was another.

From the edge of the plot, I set to work with the pronged hoe, hoping that would be enough to dislodge the small clumps of new grass poking up. As I got into a rhythm of turning the soil, my thoughts and worries churned right alongside. I’d known the whole month of May, right after the final push of the semester was over, that Dylan might have trouble adjusting, might go off-track—only not this far! With him, I’d learned that supposedly quiet, slow times could be downright treacherous. So when he’d say Everything’s cool, Mom, that’s when I needed to prick up my ears for trouble coming over the horizon. When he didn’t have to worry, that’s when I had to do overtime.

Why hadn’t Dylan gotten a summer job right away like we talked about? That was the plan, and it seemed easy enough. But no, instead, right after finals, this guy Keith Birchen shows up, a visit by an old friend from Cincinnati. I should have smelled that rat from day one. Instead, gullible Mom, I thought at first: Oh, this will make a nice change. Give Dylan some needed companionship. He’s feeling so isolated. Having a friend here will give him a boost. Yeah, it was a boost, all right. A boost that landed him in the county jail.

I felt betrayed. My heart burned with the pain of it. Why did I ever try to persuade Dylan he should come here to continue his undergrad education? Wasn’t that just asking for trouble? As long as he was out there, somewhere, I could field the curve balls as they were thrown to me, but I would have my home and my job to return to as refuge. Now, with him right here in town, I had no refuge at all.

I’d persuaded him to come here because I thought this place could help him. Instead of being caught up in fast-paced Cincinnati, he’d be back in the small, friendly town where he grew up. He’d be enrolled at a smaller college that took pride in nurturing students and push/pulling them through the hoops required of an undergraduate degree. And I was a faculty member there, chair of a small department. Yet even here, in this protected spot, and despite his presumed best intentions, there had been incidents. A DUI, for example. And him telling me beforehand that he thought it was unfair that he didn’t have a car. OK, so what about when he DID have a car? Two different ones over the years: an ancient white Camry that I gave him for free, and after that a black Camry that we researched, found, and bought together with his dad while Dylan was a student at the University of Cincinnati. And that was a couple of years ago when all he had were simple traffic tickets. Now, back here in Croftburg, he’d gotten another DUI driving my car to do an errand, or so he said. I found out later he’d used it to get beer, then drove while he was drinking to de-stress. Sure, he could handle it. No, you can’t! Guess what, NO MORE CARS for you, buddy! Go take a walk!

And now, having transferred here and managing to get through two semesters, he pulls this stunt. And it wasn’t like all the other careless, stupid things he’d done in the past. No, this was a pre-meditated plan—at least the illegal marijuana-growing part was. I should have left him right where he’d been in Cincinnati. He could have continued his downhill trajectory there. If he was so hell-bent on destruction, he could have gotten locked up there instead of here where I live. What an idiot I’d been! Was there no end to this madness?

I was working up a sweat and a rage. Toiling away in the bare garden plot, I could feel the sweat running down into my collar. Every time I came upon a new clump of grass starting to grow, I’d have to claw at it with the hoe; the roots were amazingly tenacious. No wonder I was getting a workout. Soon, I arched back in a full torso stretch and removed my long-sleeved shirt down to the tee underneath. For a moment, I felt a lingering cool breeze on my face and neck. It felt good. Before tying the shirt around my waist, I used it to dry my forehead and the sides of my face, my neck. The sun was climbing higher. I looked at the soil I’d been working on. I was making some progress; the offending clumps of grass were strewn on the sides of the plot like flotsam and jetsam on either side of a boat. No, more like all my best mom plans from the past now dug up and cast aside. I took a few sips of water, then picked up the hoe again.

And then the whole circus of Keith Birchen’s impromptu visit. A blast from the past. And me trying to think it was probably OK. No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. When dealing with my son’s bipolar disorder and the potential for disarray it can cause, I always worry. So then I don’t know when I need to worry and when I don’t. Don’t know how to handle it. So, for example, before I left town, I met with Dylan at his apartment and he assured me that Keith was leaving in a couple of days. After that, of course, he would look for a summer job. I told him where I was going and when I’d be back. When Dylan introduced his friend to me, Keith smiled, chatted for a bit, and gamely shook my hand, while assuring me, Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your boy. How could I be so naïve? But then, how much control did I really have?

My partner John and I then took off on our trip. Was I not entitled to a vacation like every other working person I know back at the office? It seemed that everything was fine. At least until our plane landed in Boston. Then my phone rang.

Dylan’s voice on the other end sounded flat. I’m feeling depressed, he said. I think I need to go to St. Clair.

This was the psychiatric clinic I had taken him to late last fall, when he’d had a crisis and needed to be checked in to stabilize for a few days. As we talked, I tried to find out more about what was going on, but the only clear message Dylan came out with was, I don’t have any more money. I reminded him about looking for a job. He said it would be OK. He could borrow some cash from Keith to get by. Our connection in the noisy airport wasn’t very good, so I told him I’d call him back later and we could talk more.

But later when I called, there was no answer. By then we were at John’s brother’s house. In this more relaxed atmosphere, I could have gotten a better sense of what was going on. But my son didn’t answer, and he didn’t call back. Not that day or the day after. It didn’t surprise me because there had been many tempests in teapots before, a crisis where the sky was falling and then, just when I was ready to call in the first responders, suddenly everything was fine again. That was a pattern. And so I figured it would be like all the other times; Dylan would muddle through. Besides, he was with a friend who had a car. If Dylan really needed to go to the clinic, they could go. I was concerned, but it seemed too extreme to drop everything and fly back.

Yes, Keith had a car all right. He also had a gun, an illegal one that had been stolen. In addition to a firearm, there was plenty of firewater around—another thing I didn’t know. About twenty empty bottles of vodka were all lined up on the floor around the main room of the apartment. I saw all this when I eventually entered it with a key to get Dylan’s meds for him after he called from jail. I was surprised they allowed me to do this, but they did. Just looking around at the tumbled decor, the med bottles in disarray on the kitchen cupboard shelf and on the counter, barely a scrap of food in the refrigerator, a picture emerged for me of what must have gone on there. The story behind the scene got filled in by what the apartment manager, Blaine, told me later. He was a vet who went to AA meetings on his motorcycle and lived quietly in the apartment below with his girlfriend and their child. After talking with him, I could only surmise glumly that with all the goings-on upstairs, those two guys could have been apprehended by the authorities at any time during the two weeks Keith was visiting. The truly amazing thing is that they both survived, and neither of them was shot!

My back and arms were getting sore from the constant heaving and turning of the soil. I had to lean back again, pause, catch my breath. I could feel my heart pounding, feel a dry rasp in my throat. Time to reach for the water bottle again. The air was no longer cool; instead, I felt the heat of the sun on my arms, more sweat dripping down. I hated to wear a hat. It just made my head feel hotter, but it kept the sun off. Mostly, I wanted to get this job done. In a short while, I could shift to the rake.

As for Keith, he had left before Dylan got arrested. The two apparently had a fight because Dylan insisted he give him the gun. Dylan told me later he needed the gun because he had to protect his investment in the marijuana, which Keith never found out about. It seemed that paranoia was growing in those planter boxes, too. Nobody knew about the forbidden plants except Dylan, until the police got a search warrant. What they were looking for was another gun that one of his drinking buddies had reported was there somewhere. They never found a second weapon, but they did find the hidden Schedule 1 plant installation. That was the third felony on top of the charge for wanton endangerment and the one for possessing a stolen firearm.

The fact of the matter was—and this hurt me the most—my son had been flat-out dishonest with me. Here I was, being generous, noble, helping him through all the ups and downs, the challenges. Then, instead of just doing what he was supposed to—climbing up the path, getting his college degree, and landing a job for the summer—Dylan pulls this outrageous stunt. How could he do this to me?

Betrayal, pure and simple. He was playing off my generosity, all my good intentions. Instead of openly disagreeing with me, he’d just decided to deceive me, keep me in the dark. No wonder he was slow to look for a job; he’d already decided to use his creativity to make money undercover. It would be much easier, much more fun. He was going to harvest his own pot and sell it in Cincy. Ah, but then, his Big Plan fell apart—and so did mine. Now, instead of being a heroic mom, I’d been cast without my permission in a low-budget B movie, a potboiler. Yeah, that’s the part my son offered me. No heroics here, folks, just a quick crime show that won’t end well.

The sympathetic landlord talked to me twice—and for a long time, too. Finally, he informed me gently that Dylan’s apartment would have to be vacated. Everything out by the end of the month, he said. I’m sorry, but that’s how it goes.

This whole catastrophe felt like some kind of huge joke being played on me. I thought about the time I took Dylan to the therapist in Parksville, thinking that therapy, along with the right meds, was going to be part of the way toward better awareness and better choices. Of course, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do if your son has a mood disorder? And it might have worked out that way, too, in about ten more years. However, it just so happened on this particular day that a special copy of Newsweek magazine happened to be lying on the coffee table in the waiting room. Its cover photo showed a lush green plant with star-shaped leaves, sporting a frothy spray of flowers on top. And the feature article? It was all about the new legal pot industry in Colorado, how growers were making fortunes by producing both medical marijuana and its cousin, recreational marijuana. The distinction had to do with the particular type of cannabinoids and terpenes present in the resin-covered flowers. Photos showed skilled gardeners carefully tending plants in greenhouses, labeling each one. For sure, Colorado was on the edge of a bold, new experiment. Dylan pounced on the magazine and read avidly, showing me the highlights, until his name was called for the counseling session.

So then later, in jail, Dylan revealed to me that this very article was his impetus to kick it up a notch and lay claim to his share of the entrepreneurial venture. If Blaine, the pot-smoking landlord wouldn’t go into the business (as a veteran with health issues, he preferred to stay under the