I am a worrier by nature.
I have gotten better at NOT worrying so much though. I think it comes with aging.
At a certain point, one comes to the realization that worrying is just a wasted emotion. Worrying as far as I know has NEVER accomplished anything, NEVER changed the outcome of a situation, and only causes undue stress on a person.
So, armed with this fairly new found wisdom, it was put to the test early one morning last week.
The family dog, and I use the word ‘family’ in the broadest sense since I am the one who does most of the caring for little Max – but I digress…
Max woke me up at the usual 6am. It seems dogs don’t understand the notion of ‘Winter break’. I got up out of bed, reluctantly throwing my toasty warm electric blanket off and fumbled around in the dark for my slippers.
Downstairs, the hubby had fallen asleep on the living room couch, leaving the television on and tuned into one of those adventure channels that he is so fond of watching. As I walk over to turn the TV off I hear the narrator mention Pompeii. Ever since I was a child and first heard about the eruption in Pompeii and how the unfortunate towns’ people were caught off-guard and basically covered with the molten lava (or ‘hot lava’ as kids say), turning into statues right where they hovered, I have been intrigued by the story.
So, ignoring the dog whimpers needing to go out, I sat down on the hassock and watched. The show was not only about Pompeii, but interviewed many leading Vulcanists who seemed worried about the state of our planet – what with all the volcanoes rumbling and gurgling and just waiting to explode with devastating terror on helpless folk.
“Really?” I say out loud to the dog. “It is too early in the day for me to have to worry about the threat of a volcano erupting! C’mon lets get your leash boy.”
Ten minutes later, I’ve taken the dog out and made a pot of coffee. This is the time I usually sit down and check my e-mail and Facebook in the quiet of the morning, but I had forgotten to turn off the TV before and noticed the volcano show as it continued. I once again sat down with my coffee cup and settled in to watch.
This expert volcano woman is talking about how the next big blast that happens somewhere on an island in who-knows-where-part-of-the-world will emit so much sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, that it will have the potential to kill millions of people! Not only that, but researchers are now re-thinking the possibility that the sulfuric acid from a volcano was the true scourge behind the Plague in Europe?!
That information was enough for me to switch off the TV and take my “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” mug of coffee over to the computer for a relaxing game of Candy Crush.
On my list of things to worry about that I keep in my head, dying from asphyxiation via sulfuric acid was never considered. Care and happiness of my family, car troubles, home improvement issues, finances, the economy – these are things I usually fret about.
As a young mother to my two oldest, now-grown kids, I worried a lot. Thank God I lived near my parents and older sisters who could advise and calm my fears as I learned to raise my two little ones. It was great. My kids and their cousins all experienced life together. Strept throats, ear infections, chicken pox, scabies, stomach bugs and the flu went through our little family circus.
Of course, they all attended schools, church, scouts and swim teams together too. It was great! If one of my kids got a stick in the eye playing pirates, or accidentally walked into a baseball bat being swung by another, or wiped out riding a bike down a set of cement stairs, or had a tooth knocked out playing basketball, all I had to do was call the sister who completed nurses’ training to tell me what to do. If any school-related issues came up, I’d call the school counselor sister-in-law, when I needed advice on writing a will, I just called my lawyer brother, if I needed ‘The Toy Of The Moment’, I’d ring my brother who worked on Sesame Street! I didn’t need to worry about much – but I did anyway.
When we moved away from my hometown where I had basically lived my entire life, my third child was about to turn five-years-old and I had recently discovered that I was pregnant again with baby number four. It was turning out to be the perfect storm of psychological stresses. My husband was let go following a hostile take-over scenario of the company where he had worked so hard. He finally found another job here in Richmond but two hours away from where we lived. We decided to take a leap of faith and move the family from the house that we rented for the past twelve-years in a DC suburb, to become homeowners for the first time in Richmond.
Raising two kids here is a bit different. First and foremost, I didn’t have my extended family around me anymore. I don’t care how many kids you already have, when you are pregnant you still want your mom and sisters around to share in it. This time around being pregnant, my new obstetrician treated me as a high-risk patient simply because I was forty-five-years-old. Most of the women I came across in the doctors’ waiting room were probably twenty-years younger than me.
This was not the case in the DC area where I had lived.
I guess women there postponed their pregnancies until later-in-life after having careers or something? All I know is that I felt old, and my conservative doctor was making me get all kinds of tests that I previously never had to have and I was worrying more!
The job my husband took was not what he had hoped it would be and he wound up searching for and finding another. But not without my worrying about what could happen if he didn’t find one soon.
My then teen-aged daughter spent most of our first summer here moping and crying about the fact that we had moved and taken her away from all her friends and cousins. It broke my heart to see her that way and we spent many hours either sitting on the couch watching movies and taking long walks around our new neighborhood together. And you know what? By taking all those walks together we talked about a lot of stuff. We met our new neighbors too.
I found out that unlike where we had been living in a ‘cityish’ setting and relying on my family so much for everything from childcare to friendships we had been missing out on a lot. For the first time I had to be more out-going and make new friends for myself and for my kids. Our neighbors welcomed us to the area by making goodies and dropping by to introduce themselves. They made lists for us of which days trash was picked up and where to get the best milkshakes and the best veterinarians and lots of other helpful information.
“Where was I? Mayberry?” I wondered. This was great. People looked after each other here much more than where we had moved. There, most folks tended to focus more on themselves.
It is not perfect living here. I guess nowhere is truly perfect. But I don’t think I worry as much as I used to.
Or maybe I just have a different set of worries now.
My oldest daughter lives in the Dominican Republic teaching English. My oldest son has moved back home because of complications from Chronic Lyme Disease. I have no control over over either of these situations and have adopted a new philosophy of handing over more things to God because worrying does me no good.
My two younger kids are growing up on a quiet residential street where they can ride bikes and play with many friends and attend a neighborhood school in a safe environment. What more could a mother hope for really?
What the future holds still simmers on the back burner of my mind, but I sincerely refuse to worry about a Pompeii-sized volcanic eruption that may or may not happen in the next hundred years.
