Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. – Lady Macbeth
My grown, adult, daughters recently returned from a trip to Paris together. I worried the entire time. I worried they didn’t get the right cell phone plan. I worried their planes would crash. I worried they would lose their luggage, eat bad escargot, fall off the Eiffel Tower, get hit by a baguette delivery van, and worst of all: Be Taken. JUST. LIKE. THAT. MOVIE. I do NOT have certain set of skills to enable me to rescue them, though I would give it everything I had.
Even when they landed safely back on US soil and my toes uncurled a bit, I worried still. My youngest daughter (who had been traveling the equivalent of about 24 hours – aka the reason for the affordable adventure) was going to drive another 5 hours home from her sister’s house. In the middle of the night. I made her promise to keep me posted on her drive home. I tried to fall asleep. I spent the next 5 hours between imagining and dreaming a host of scenarios that included, but were not limited to: gang-bangers carjacking her at the gas station, her falling asleep and careening off the highest cliff on the Grapevine, trying to answer my phone call and swerving into oncoming traffic, and my favorite, just disappearing into the thin air and never arriving at her apartment. She sent me a text when she got home at about 4 am that she was safe and she felt bad she made me worry. I wasn’t mad or vexed in the slightest.
I’m a mom. It’s what I do.
I thought about all of us moms lately and what we do. The worry that we also gave birth to. For some of us even at conception. And people tend to say, don’t worry, be happy. They explain with a two-sided coin either: Everything happens for a reason and a purpose or, that we can’t control the universe and our place in it and we all die eventually. Ew. Blerg. Here is what I have concluded from my very unscientific research called: my gut. Worry is okay, even good for moms. Obsessive need for control is not. Let me take you down this rabbit hole.
At the most base point we worry because of our genetic desire to protect our child(ren). On one side we want to protect them from, well basically, death. And we evaluate everything that enters our child’s life with a litmus test. We rate it as to how likely it is to cause or bring about death to our offspring and act accordingly. If we allow our mind to play out the worst case scenarios we picture our worst fear, which is their death. Their death, we imagine, would take away our reason, our hope and bring us despair, pain and eventually our own death emotionally and maybe physically. (My mind goes to Debbie Reynolds.) What a lovely Mother’s Day blog right? Wait, I am just acknowledging the truth of our fears. We want our children alive.
But the reason we want our children to live, the reason we worry, at its core, is beautiful. We worry because we hope. We want the best for them. We imagine their life and all the potential it holds. We picture them with a successful education, which leads to a fulfilling career with fortune, family, and fame. We imagine them finding love and happiness and creating their own children to worry about and thus ensuring our legacy for generations to come. Those are not bad things to imagine and hope for our children even if they are not all realistic or probable. And the risk is that as a mom you may impose these hopes on your child, therefore causing them to possibly confuse your dreams for them with their ability to create and find their own path. But from a mom perspective, “I just want the best for you.” There lies the rub: what we hope for is not always what is best for them and we have to allow for experiences bad and good to shape their lives. It sucks, but let’s face it. We don’t always know what’s best and if you think you do you are robbing the wisdom of your future self.
Like our love for our children, our worry never ends, no matter their age, strength or health. “Mom, I’m fine,” is the constant reply of my adult daughters. But you don’t know. People DO get their foot stuck in a railroad track and until further notice I have a right to worry about the cage match between you and that train! I don’t mind that I worry. Selfishly, I know that it means I’m still a mom. I am well aware that my worries are mostly made up in my mind and so banal in comparison to the millions of mother’s currently standing over their child’s hospital beds or sitting in the jail visiting room. Believe me when I say, I worry mostly because I know how blessed I am and I wait every second of every hour for the ball to drop on my world announcing, “Time’s up lady. Your turn to hurt.” I run from that day, filled with worry but also with hope. That my turn won’t come. And I see the life I imagined for them continue.
The tables have turned for me now as a daughter too. I worry about my mom, who suffers from advancing Alzheimer’s. I worry about all the scenarios I will not discuss today. But I smile too when I think of her this morning. Knowing our souls are forever knit in the worry stitch. Knowing she wanted the best life for me, that she worried about me keeping me safe so I could create her legacy. Oh sweet mother, your worries are over and a job well done. For now, worrying will be my job. But don’t worry my daughters (see what I did there?) I’ll pass the baton soon.
Happy Mother’s Day.
