When I was pregnant with my second child, I bought a piece of wall art with this quote from librarian and educator Elizabeth Stone. “Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
I thought the quote was lovely when I bought the piece, but I didn’t realize how true it was until my children were born. I have two hearts outside of my body, and they have made the one inside larger and fuller.
The world is a big and dangerous place, and I can’t protect those hearts with a rib cage and skin, or with exercise and healthy eating. Those hearts are vulnerable, and they make my inside heart more vulnerable, too. Like all mothers, I worry about my kids.
I have generalized fears such as health and safety. I have smaller worries like school performance and peer relationships. My heart can handle these worries, but there are some fears that I just cannot visit. I lock them up, and focus on the smaller worries that I may have some control over.
My mind protects itself; it doesn’t often let the fear go deep. I will not let myself be swallowed by it; I will not let fear take precedence over living. Yet every so often, when my mind relaxes a bit, three types of fears burrow in and squeeze gently, reminding me of their presence.
- A fear of doing everything right, but it still won’t be enough. Not every kid who gets involved with drugs and alcohol comes from a dysfunctional home or has negligent parents. Mental illness affects even picture perfect families. We raise them as best we can, but the rest is up to them. Even more frightening are the parts that aren’t up to them. No matter how tightly I have hugged my children and loved them and nurtured them, I have to relinquish control to them and to life. That lack of control fuels my fear.
- A less intense but more amorphous fear of my children growing up. They need me less and less every year; one is already in college and living her life for weeks at a time without me. I don’t know what she’s wearing or eating for dinner, or with whom she’s spending time. This child who I nursed, diapered, fed and raised for 18 years is no longer present in my daily life. That simultaneously terrifies me and brings me to tears. I am successfully releasing my heart into the world, and she has come back to me unscathed. But there will come a day when she sleeps under my roof for the last time.
- This brings me to my third fear. Once my children are independent adults (please be independent, that’s fear 3.5), what will our relationship be like? Will they want to spend time with me, or will visits with Mom be a chore to be tolerated? And then spouses enter the mix, specifically with my son — will he marry a woman who supports his relationship with his parents? I would like to believe he would not marry someone who doesn’t love his family, but I’ve seen it happen, and it scares me.
There. I’ve acknowledged my fears, and given them a voice. I may revisit them from time to time, because parenting is often uncharted territory. I will not let their voice be the loudest one in my head, though. I will not let them crowd out the “I love you’s” and the laughter, or steal any of my time spent with my outside hearts.
A Baltimore native, Dana Hemelt and her husband live in Howard County. They have two teenagers. She blogs at kissmylist.com and tweets @kissmylist.
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