Thirty-six years ago, heavy with child, I argued with my husband about what to name the baby. We knew it was a boy and eventually settled on a first name of Robin — Robby for short — after my husband’s sister, after one of my best friends (and silently, just in my head, after the first boy I ever danced with). And Robin Williams, of course.

After that came the real disagreement: the middle name. My husband wanted Douglas, after his uncle, a burly man with Santa Claus hair and beard who was the drum major in a bagpipe band.

I couldn’t argue with that, but he also wanted Sean (which he insisted was pronounced ‘Ian’ in Scotland), while I wanted Kenneth, after a dear friend. It was a stalemate that finally broke when we gave up and threw all three names into the mix. The baby would be named Robin Douglas Sean (pronounced Ian) Kenneth Hillier.

Little did we know the suffering this amusing compromise would someday bring upon our son.

It began long after the divorce, when Robby came home from sixth grade complaining that his three middle names caused no end of confusion for his teachers.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, exasperated.

He did not find my explanation funny. If I’d had the gift of foresight, I would have used my parental powers right then to change the name on his birth certificate. But I didn’t. Later, I lost his birth certificate, another consequential mistake that would play out decades later, when my son’s troubles really began.

In this age of online databases, there is no room for extra names on web-based forms — drivers’ licenses and car registrations, for instance. Low-level bureaucrats do not seem to know, or care, what to do when you call to correct a mistake.

Robby muddled through adult life until he and his girlfriend moved to Colorado, where he needed a birth certificate to get a license because he hadn’t renewed his old license, and he had neither a passport nor a social security card, which he had misplaced.

He called the New York town where he was born, enduring weeks of red tape until the precious document was sent, only to learn it wouldn’t do — only a state-issued birth certificate was acceptable. But the state of New York had Douglas as his first name and Robin as his first middle name. State offices did not answer the phone. Email and snail mail did no better. An attorney was engaged to straighten things out and quickly gave up.

This went on for more than a year. Meanwhile, Robby could not legally drive his own car. Fortunately, he had a remote job and rode out the pandemic lockdown at home, but he was beginning to feel like an unperson caught in a bizarre, Kafkaesque limbo.

In Colorado, as in other states that have legalized marijuana, if you don’t have a driver’s license or equivalent I.D., you can’t buy weed to help manage your growing depression. You need someone else — say, your girlfriend — to buy it for you, and drive to the supermarket for your food, and take you to the doctor to try and get antidepressants. She might even get tired of the hassle, as if you chose it. So, when the company you work for goes under and lets you go, so does she.

Robby was out of a job, with an unregistered and now non-working car, and about to be homeless, but he was in luck. He had a mother who felt terrible that her long-ago mistakes had caused him so much pain and also just happened to have come into some unexpected cash, enough to fix the car, pay it off and rent a small place next to hers where he could stay until he could straighten out the rest of the mess.

And so, Robin Douglas Sean (Ian) Kenneth Hillier came to stay with me in the tiny community of Tres Piedras on the edge of a forest in northern New Mexico.

Robby was broken when he arrived with his equally anxious pit bull dachshund mix, Tyson, eyes welling as he described how he felt “like a dirty rag thrown in the trash.” My heart broke too, listening. But as we walked our dogs in the forest twice a day, he began to breathe again, restored by the clean air, quiet and tall Ponderosas. I fed him eggs and potatoes and burritos. He made ramen. For Thanksgiving, we cooked enough food to feed us for a week.

Snow fell. We sat quietly in my tiny trailer, writing and reading. After dinner, we watched movies and discussed them at length. I got to know the kind, intelligent man Robby had become. He was no longer the boy I remembered.

He planned to move to North Carolina, where a friend had offered a place to stay while he made a new start. It was just a matter of waiting for the final paperwork to arrive: the title to his car.

We thought it would take only a couple weeks. It took three months.

Every time a piece of mail came for him, I got my hopes up, but it was never the letter he needed. One official letter came addressed to “Kenneth Sean,” and Robby despaired. He had been through so many disappointments that he didn’t trust he would ever be free to live his life again.

The next day, I texted him as usual to say I was getting ready for our morning walk, but there was no reply. Sleeping late, I thought. An hour later, I texted again. Still nothing. My imagination started to wonder if something was wrong.

“Are you OK?” I texted. No reply.

I couldn’t help letting my thoughts spiral. Just over a year earlier, I had watched Robby’s older half brother, Chris, suffer an agonizing, cirrhosis death after a lifelong addiction to alcohol. In my grief, I blamed myself for my failures as a mother, first denying, then bargaining. My head swirled with “if onlys” and “what ifs,” but there is no rewind button on life. I could only try to do better with the son I had.

I waited for a response from Robby, but there was none. His depression worried me. He had told me once that he’d never had a suicidal thought, but could that have changed? I called. Finally, after a long, heart-pounding wait, he answered.

“Slept late,” he said, sounding groggy. “I’ll get ready.”

My relief was so great that after we hung up, I broke down in big, gulping sobs, splashing my face with cold water to remove the red blotches so he wouldn’t know.

“Just saw your texts,” he responded then. “I’m sorry.”

So he knew how worried I was.

Robby’s depression was the background tone of his time with me after that. As we waited for the mail every day, winter drained warmth and color from the forest. It was too cold to enjoy our previous long hikes, and we hurried back to my little home as soon as the dogs had done their business.

And then one day, the letter came, the one we had waited for and feared would never arrive. Robby did not trust that his name would be correct until he opened it and checked for himself. “Robin Douglas Sean Kenneth Hillier.”

We laughed and cried and celebrated.

But the ordeal wasn’t over. We still had to go to the New Mexico motor vehicle department and register the car before Robby could legally drive to North Carolina. What if he didn’t have the right paperwork, proof of address, or whatever else was required?

He called and made an appointment, double-checking, then called again just to make sure. And again.

Still, as we drove to town the next day, he was convinced something would go wrong. At the MVD office, Robby’s brow furrowed while the woman carefully went through every piece of paper.

Then she handed him his new license plate. He couldn’t believe it. Just like that, he was officially a person again.

A few mornings later, I fixed breakfast burritos, and we ate in silence. We had said everything that needed saying except goodbye. We walked out into the snow and finished loading the car. I scratched Tyson’s ears. “Good boy,” I said to the little dog, and turned to Robby, determined not to get emotional. I failed. “I’ll miss you,” I said, voice squeaking.

“I’ll miss you too,” he squeaked back, and we hugged, and hugged again, laughing at ourselves for crying.

“Thank you for everything,” he said, and got in the car.

I watched him drive away, waving at him until he was out of sight, wracked by the sudden loss, a pain that was entirely self-inflicted. And that’s the paradox of parental love: My job was to help him leave me.

LaVonne Ellis is a writer who lives in Washington State.

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