If you're new to aagblog.com you should subscribe to my RSS feed here, or have new content delivered directly to your inbox here. Follow my Twitter updates here.
Wow, we’ve had so many great entries for the Tuesday Super-Swag contest. You have until Sunday July 5th at 12:01 am to get additional entries in. Go check out all the new posts at Beyond the Birds and the Bees.
——
Months ago the ex announced his intention to take our eldest child on a week-long vacation to his home town. I agreed, half (at least) convinced that like so many of his other plans this one would not come to fruition.
Each passing week showed him to be more dedicated than I’d imagined. He drew up an ambitious yet thoughtful itinerary, contacted childhood friends, made hotel reservations and purchased supplies. He even took his car in for a pre-trip checkup, an action which both shocked an impressed me given his absolute ignorance of all things vehicular during our union.
I contributed as well, making sure that my daughter packed the requisite number of outfits and underthings. I weeded out (and quietly replaced) a few of her hole-ridden favorites. Together we procured enough books to busy her and snacks to keep everyone energized during the long car ride.
Upon learning about the trip my mother began panicking. I’m sure she won’t stop panicking until my daughter returns home. Actually, that’s inaccurate. My mother began worrying about this child the very day I reported a missed period. She’ll continue to worry about her until either she or the child dies. “I can’t believe you’re letting him take her,” she’s exclaimed more than once. “Do you think he can handle it? You know he’s not a very good driver.”
At each outburst I tried to calm her with little success. I may worry but my mother is a worrier, an inveterate, award-winning worrier. She takes gold medals in worrying for both speed and endurance. If her worrying were a television show it would be The Simpsons or Law and Order. If it had a Google page rank it would be 10; if it had a population it would be that of China. And India. Combined.
This apple didn’t fall far from the tree; however, I have the benefit of sufficient counseling and medication to keep the anxiety under control, or at least mostly so. I worry too: That he’ll drive past the point of exhaustion and wreck. That he’ll be distracted with friends or family and allow her to wander off. That a random stranger at a rest stop will snatch her. That she’ll be sick or sad or lonely. That she’ll never return home.
“Don’t fret,” my friends have told me. “Nothing bad will happen to her. Of course she’ll make it home safely.” I know they mean well, but my friends are wrong. Chances are excellent that in the space of a week she’ll be back in the house, back to her usual routine of whining and complaining when things aren’t exactly to her liking. But there are no guarantees; of this I am keenly aware.
Sometimes children don’t come back. It’s a risk one agrees to, however unwittingly, the moment sperm and egg meet. If I didn’t understand that risk after months and months spent trying to conceive my first child then I did after years waiting for the second child and even more so after a tricky placement the third time around.
It’s always a risk, and no matter how much I might love my children, I don’t own them. I can’t keep them safe. I have to let them go every day in ways big and small because their entire lives consist of moving away from me. To do anything else would be to try to keep them helpless children, a prospect which surely would fail.
…when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
– Sogyal Rinpoche
this makes me remember how my mother would panic for days on end before my father took us on one of his “vacations” (meaning…any park close enough to the racetrack he wanted to visit).
once he kept us for 10 days extra without telling my mother…or us that she did not know.
we can home to police and tears. it was frightful but since then my mother will always look like home no matter what state she is in.
hopefully when your daughter returns she will see that in you.
It’s such a scary thing to have to watch our children grow and learn and walk away from us – one day at a time. It’s ok for you to worry, it shows that you care.
peace…
This made me giggle. :)
The person who occasionally watches our children left them alone in an amusement park the other day. (There was some mixup with an Aunt and a moron boyfriend). I talked to the cops, and talked to the kids, and now, find myself worrying about this woman at every turn. I didn’t do that before, and I hate it.
At the same time, I keep trying to remember the time I got lost in Wool-co, or all the other times I wandered off and was fine.
It’s a tightrope, fer sure.
Monkey i think your right. and to be worry is good.
I so understand. My daughter is 6 yrs old. (we lost her dad in a car wreck 5 1/2 years ago.) That knowledge/reality that everything can change in a fraction of a second. Playing at a friend’s house, even a trip to the store with grandma – it’s a constant struggle keeping the fear and worry in check.
Have to laugh at myself sometimes, thinking back to our childhood – when seat belts were just those straps tucked between the seat cushions, child car seats were yet to be invented, helmets were for football instead of bicycles, and a swimming lesson was hearing “sink or swim!” right before we hit the water.
and we survived – somehow. lol =)~
i don’t remember who said it, but i have an Anne Geddes picture that has this quote on it:
“The decision to have a child is to accept that our hearts will forever walk outside our bodies.”
This is especially apparent when our children go away from us. My daughter is currently two weeks into her very first 6-week-long parenting time with her father. Not that this is the first time he’s seen her, but the first time she’s spent more than two weeks with him at one time.
My new URL is http://britisstillshameless.blogspot.com/
Plz to update sidebars and such!
Now it’s fixed on the comment form, too :)