Last fall, in the same week, my son had surgery and my daughter suffered a devastating breakup. The surgery was minor (and successful) and the breakup was mended (and unnecessarily dramatic), but the mom stress was high. There’s a quote that floats around about how having a child is like wearing your heart on the outside of your body. That week a year ago, my heart was simultaneously anesthetized on an operating table and broken by the drama of young love. It was a lot.
I have four adult kids, but sometimes it seems I worry about them more now than when they were small and underfoot. Maybe I’m still going through the parental divorce. Maybe when they’re older adults, I’ll think of them less often, like friends or cousins.
There’s a whiff of dramatic overstatement to it, but the sentiment that resonates with me is this: a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. It sucks, but it’s kind of true. I’m able to find some small joy in my own life when a child is in crisis (guilt be damned), but the crisis is the palette. It’s the background noise, the soundtrack.
When my oldest was a baby, I remember a moment of epiphany. Kneeling on the floor, holding his perfect chubby body in my unpracticed hands and studying his little round face, I was struck by this crystalline thought:
I will worry about this person until the day I die.
How about a little respect for the worrying moms in this world of PLAGUE, WAR, INSURRECTION, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, CLIMATE CRISIS! And so much more! It’s never been easy but ohmygod it’s a tough season for the carers.
You can hear it in the voice, through the telephone. The match that lights the hot fuse of worry. “Hi Mom.”
One needs surgery, another needs money. They need a ride, guidance, a shoulder, an ear — all of which I’m happy to provide and would miss terribly, if they stopped needing me. It’s in the job description and I chose the job. I just underestimated the emotional investment.
I had a dream — nightmare? — in which my struggling adult son was a little boy again. I fell to my knees and held him, asking, “Do you know that I love you?” He looked at me with his little boy eyes and shook his head no.
Oof. Years later, I’m still haunted.
If you’re lucky (and I was), when they’re young the troubles are manageable. Bite-sized. Splinters and pox, sibling rivalries and bad friends. Bandaids, braces, bullies, and bugs. Doctors, dentists, orthodontists. Bad eyes and late readers. Crises of confidence and unchecked arrogance. So many meals my god. It’s hard, holding up the sky every day for so many others. There’s no pay and little respect. The world has plenty to say when you fuck it up, but all is quiet when you’re crushing it.
When they grow up, though, they get the goodie bag of adult trial — thunderous heartache, crushing debt, mutinous bodies. They discover intoxicants and fast cars. They get on planes and fly across the world and you worry. Some of them go nowhere, grounded by their anxieties, and you worry. Have you given them your anxieties? You study their travel itineraries and their Insta stories, try and suss the tone of texts. Do you think he’s really okay? I worry. Surprising no one. My youngest told me, “Mom, you worry too much about your kids.” HA! Just wait, angel. Is there a drug for this?
Remember all the stupid things you did when you were young? They will do all of those things and some creative new shit of their own, while you wave and yell in the background. Stop! Turn back! Learn from my mistakes! They will ignore you the way you ignored the best advice and you will watch the mistakes unfold, in slow motion, and you will take that to bed with you every night and there is nothing you can do with it. Chew on it and try to get some sleep.
Everywhere I go, they go with me, chattering in my head about this and that, winnings and injuries, hopes and fears. I am never really alone. I’d love to be a chic flâneuse in a beautiful Old World city with tiny perfect bakeries and swoonworthy art. Big sunglasses and a statement ring, alone with my thoughts and plans. There is no alone, though, with these four characters in my head. I mostly love it, but it’s a crowd.
I’m pretty sure they don’t think of me this way. Whole days (weeks?) pass without them thinking about me at all. I suspect this because my mother was nowhere near the top of my mind when I was young, flitting around the mad world with all the confidence of a happy idiot. I hope it’s true, that they get to live their one wild and precious young life unfettered by thoughts of their mother. They may end up tied to thoughts of their own kids — maybe there will be a drug for that by then.
This morning, as I sit on my peaceful screened porch in upstate New York, I’ve got a kid visiting Chicago and one on a plane to San Francisco. One is at work nearby and another is upstairs, in the childhood bedroom, working hard to rebuild after a nasty curveball. My sense is that they’re all relatively happy, today. But I’ll be parsing degrees of worry into the night. Texting, tracking flights, gauging everyone’s level of okayness. I’m okay when they’re okay. And if one of them is less than okay, that’s my bar. That’s where I live until we raise it. At least I don’t have to feed them all tonight.
Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin has been on my TBR list for way too long. Bumping it up for some summer armchair travel.
In the words of an old friend, I do not want to be defined by my children. However, one of the best things I’ve written was about kids. Oh well.
I’ve been enjoying Sara Fredman’s substack, Write Like a Mother, about creativity and parenting. Great interviews with writing parents (parenting writers?).
My daughter went to Greece and actually thought about me! She staged the bottom photo to mirror my own from the 80s. Yes, she flew in a plane and visited a big city in a pandemic. Yes, I worried. She’s fine. (I think — the tracker shows her over Des Moines, Iowa. Ask me later.)
My mom worries just like you do, about all of us. Nothing I say can make her worry less.
Yes. We always carry our kids around. Your essay resonates with me, Lisa. Thank you. And what a classic photograph of the lady in red!