Update:  Sometimes our worry is just that....worry.  Today's Facebook post from "my other son":

===================== 

   Over ten years ago I took a boy into my home who was about my son's age.  At the time, he took to calling me Ms. M.  I took to calling him my other  son.   I knew enough about his life to know that things at home were very wrong.  I recognized enough about abuse to know he had to get out of the house in which he was living.

  *

Foolish me.  Had I been wiser, I would have investigated my hunches about this young man's life years before he finally walked away from unimaginable quarters, from unimaginable demands.  I would have helped him seek emancipation to escape his daily  hell, a hell I have only learned about over time in bits and pieces. I would have seen how censored he was in every act, how tightly controlled he was in every form of communication.

At first I saw only that he needed clothing, friends and food.  Later, I rallied the troops to help him take first steps toward higher learning.  After college, after National Service, after a cartography job, after a year overseas teaching English, I saw he needed a place where he could store things, and that he needed a spot of continuance. He needed a place to think of as home.  From that time on, in small part, my world has become that place.

Thus it began. Once or twice a year, he returned home  to visit a spunky and benevolent aunt, and to be near me for a week or two. 

Last month  he arrived and timing for me was all out of kilter.  Prior to his arrival, in private Facebook pms, I shared minimally that my personal life was out of step, and that  I was unable to provide time and space as generally anticipated.  Therefore, this last trip, the best I could do was to secure a hotel room  for his two week stay.  We got together a few times, and one night he cooked a hearty repast.  It was wonderful to see him again. Luckily, a good friend and her husband who have also come to enjoy his company picked up my slack and hosted him well activity-wise while he was home.

Last week I called my friend, Monday, to ask if she had heard from my other son since his return to China.  She had not.  Then, a few days after, on Facebook, he posted a brief message that China had blocked Twitter and Facebook, and that he was using an underground system to send word he was there and was back at work in the university.

My thickened heart.  I know he is in a precarious place.  I remember a boy who was starving because his parents were withholding food.  I remember a boy who wore the same pants and shirt for a solid month.  I remember leaving food out daily, food he always collected.  I remember hiding clothes for him in the morning before school because I had learned he would be punished for changing his clothes at home.  I remember he changed where he could, bagged the soiled wear, and left whatever he'd worn that day in the place we'd formerly designated.  I remember he re-garbed back into filth before going home.  I remember  a boy who read Aristotle.  Who taught himself several languages.  Who played Jeopardy better than most contestants.  Who loved chess. 

I remembered I just missed time with him because I was caught up in my head, my heart, my own mental pscyho-babble-drama. I remembered him, and I worred as I had worried when I first agreed he should come and he should stay. 

I remembered this young man as a survivor, and that he has survived lockdown in his emotional past. Long before he set forth on foot to see the world.  Long before he needed a place for an occasional visit. Long before our friendship on Facebook became frozen on a network now blocked in China.  Long before he tunneled out the words, I am O.K.

Long before he updated with I miss Cheese-Its.

* The Scream- Edvard Munch, 1893