Doubts, Questions, What Ifs...

Well today is a quiet day. No one is around, or online, or answering their phones. I've been putting out a lot of energy toward other people and not getting much back. I have a friend who has been quiet lately (no, not you who I just e-mailed), and a little sad? But I'm not privy to these innermost thoughts, so really maybe it's all just in my head. And I'm the kind of person who likes to help, to be talked to about problems. I can give advice when asked, but I can also just shut up and listen; be a shoulder, be an ear. That's something I learned when my father died. I was a kid with all these people talking at me about it, when all I really wanted was just someone to sit with me an just BE, to pretend it wasn't happening.

Still, not knowing kills me because it makes me wonder if maybe something of me is the reason why there's little talking. This is a quality about me that is not so good all the time. First of all, it's self-centered of me to assume that someone else's problems have to do with me. And secondly, it's something about me that I think sometimes sends people away. So I'm concerned, and in my concern I sometimes create the problem that previously did not exist. I just have this constant need to know where I stand with people. I don't know where it came from, I'm just sensitive in that way. On the flip side, this sensitivity works to your advantage if you like that kind of thing. I will tell you my feelings when asked (and a lot of the time when not asked), I will tell you how much I care about you, take the time to show how I feel. I give feedback, ask questions about your life, send you letters.

I'll be the one who first makes contact with the friend who's been out of touch for so many years. I'll make the first move with a stranger. And I'll never, ever forget someone whose life touched mine. I am a reacher-outter. But for now I will reach out in a different kind of way. I will just be here waiting.

Yikes. That's not what my title was intended to cover...but when my fingers started typing those are the words that came out. I guess I didn't realize that was so there. (Kevin the poetry-nerd is probably laughing and nodding) Anyway, here's what's happening: My life is finally slowing down a little - but I just know it's like that walk break between sprints on a track - and I have the time to pay attention to things I had forgotten needed attending to. For instance, my inccesant worrying. That's right folks, I'm a worry-wort.

Before, I was so busy and I had a whole line of complaints, but I didn't have time enough to let in the doubts. I was just plowing through the days. I was like a crazy person, but in a different way. Now I am less busy and settling back into this middle ground way of life, but no matter what state of being I'm in, there is always some kind of neurosis. And my worrying is rubbing off on my oh-so-impressionable 3 year-old. He's always been a careful kid, but I wonder if being around me is sending him over the edge into DSM-IV territory.

Not that I wasn't giving him little lectures already, but all I needed to hear was Jacob's doctor give his schpeil at the 3-year visit about 'accidents' being the no. 1 cause of death of kids his age (I already knew that) and his few sentences to Jakie about being SAFE, and safety became the thing. I find myself drilling it into his little head like he's Patty Hearst and I'm the Symbionese Liberation Army.

A couple weeks ago we were getting out of the car in our own driveway and the ball that was the 'object of the week' (meaning he has to have it with him at all times) rolled out of the car. Jacob didn't even make a move to go get it, but the cliché scenario of kid-running-after-ball-rolling-into-suburban-street (and you know what happens next) flashed across my mind. Before we even made it into the house I was starting on why we would never, ever run into the road after a ball.

When we were in Vermont last month I stopped at a gas station to get something from inside and Jacob asked the question that I was surprised to hear coming from him. "Can you leass me in da caar?" he politely asked. He was so sweet that I wanted to say yes, and truthfully, I was in Vermont, he would have been fine. But I will never do that. Hell no. I could list off a dozen things in under a minute that you never, in your wildest dreams,would even have thought up. Nevermind kidnappers, I'm afraid of the stuff that is statistically impossible. What if a meteor came from the sky and I wasn't there to grab him from the death grip of his car seat seconds before the impending collision? Or what if something happened to me inside and I had to be rushed off in an ambulance and no one even knew I had a helpless child waiting in the car? This leads to the need for Jacob to know his telephone number and house address. We sing them like it's a game.

He was so comfy and I had to tell him no, so I carried him in and talked sweetly and got him a treat, and I also had to stop to explain why. I don't know what to do here, really, tell me what to do. Do you give your kids the lectures? Am I giving Jacob a complex?? Where should I have gone from this point??? But he asked and I had to answer in some way so I gave him the truth in a very simple way. "There are some people who don't know the rules about life and they take kids when they don't want to go," I reluctantly explained. Jacob looked a little frightened by this information so I assured him that it is very rare and it would never happen to him, it's not something he has to be worried about because we are safe. As long as we are safe (and this is where I might have gone too far) things like that won't happen. I was saying the same thing, just different ways. The thing I was trying to give him was a sense of CONTROL because that is the thing that is lacking in the scenarios I am afraid of. In trying to give him control I think I was also nurturing the obsessive-compulsive side (as I type this he is crying about a section of a clementine being a little torn - normal 3 year-old behavior, or junior mental case?) of him that he gets from me. Say something about safety = relief; generalized to acting out the safe behavior = more relief. And it only gets worse from there. It might not sound like a big deal, but in my world, conditioning like that doesn't end til someone's in the crazy house, or stops leaving the house altogether.

Sometimes I see parents in parking lots with kids Jacob's age and...they are not holding hands. I'm not judging them, I'm sure they know what is best for their own kids; rather, I am jealous of them. Jealous that someone can be that relaxed in a situation that, to me, is a scale 3 life-threatening danger. At times like this I think I'm just encouraging 'healthy habits start early' or some motto like that, but when we got to the curb after leaving the eye doctor the other day, I did a quick glance for cars without announcing it to Jacob. I made the silent decision it was safe to cross, but my poor, brainwashed child pulled back on my hand. I stopped and found out what caused him to hesitate. "Oh, honey, it has to be a moving car," I laughed, but inside it hit me that I'm teaching him the world is a scary place. Maybe it is a scary place, but does he need to be as jaded as me at such a young age? If you're always paying attention to what can go wrong, at what point do you allow yourself to notice the things that go right? It makes me wonder if all of what I am doing for him is because I don't want him to be like me in this way, or if it's an unconscious desire to have someone else like me in the world.