Lately I've seen the meme where people list, as part of it, the however-many places that they've been. And some of them are pretty exotic. Some of them are pretty cool. Which makes me feel pangs of envy because I've been so few places in my life. Some of that's because it costs money to go anywhere---there's always that catch---and I've never had an especially abundant money tree.
But mostly the reason, I suspect, lies in the fact that I've never had the courage to go. When I was younger and the time was ripe, I was much too afraid to venture very far. My mother saw to that.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love my mother dearly. She's a good woman, and as the years have passed, I've come to appreciate her more and more. But one thing she does excellently is worry. When I was young, like as now, she worried about every conceivable likelihood of what could possibly happen and then when those ran out, she imagined the rest. Which isn't to say we didn't run and play and fall and scrape ourselves up plenty when we were kids. We did. In fact, back in those days and in the little town where I lived, it was common to hop on your bike in the morning and not return until suppertime. Times have changed.
But she managed in subtle ways and unconscious ways to stifle every attempt to soar. Every weak attempt to fly to the world which existed outside of the narrow lines of my childhood was met with worry and fretting. I try to remember exactly how she dampened what might have sprouted into an adventuresome spirit. This wasn't a crime of intent or malice. I don't believe her goal was to keep me imprisoned. She thought, rather, that she was keeping me safe. We love our children, and we're desperate to keep them safe. I know this.
So, like I mentioned, I've tried to figure out how exactly it was that she managed this feat of keeping me grounded. I know that she would list the things that could happen if this or that were attempted, and you could see the real fear she lived with regarding those possibilities. And so then I, too, would contemplate those possible consequences---some realistic and others ridiculous---and fear was born. Fear of trying. Fear of failing. Fear of getting in a crash on the way. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of getting lost. Fear of getting kidnapped. Fear of strange people. Fear of the unknown. Fear of running out of resources. Fear of strange dogs biting me and then getting an infection and winding up in a hospital bed with no one around to help. You know: Fear.
And I discovered that upon entering "adulthood" (supposedly), fear didn't dissolve and dissipate like childhood fog. It clung. It had silently sunk its talons into the innermost workings of courage and poisoned the seed. Crippled the origin, the core. When I would contemplate the door of Going Away To College, I realized: how scary. I could fail. When I would contemplate, even beyond that, Going Away To a Faraway City To College, I could even become paralyzed by fear of all the possibilities. When my thoughts might flit and land, temporarily, on the idea of getting a job that would include travel, I would lurch past it into safer waters. Something near. Local.
More than I was afraid for myself (except for in the areas of being afraid of failing), I worried for my mom. I imagined her fretting and stewing and crippling her days with worry for me while I was gone, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I realize now that the very best thing I could've done was go far far away and let her see that life would go on. For her. For me. That the bogeyman wouldn't get me (but what if he had? he could've and what if he had? then it would have just confirmed every worst fear. better safe than sorry).
I did manage to go from Northern California, where we had been living through my high school years, back down to Southern California where I grew up. That was as far as the rope would stretch and that was only workable because I was moving into my uncle's house, the home of my mother's brother. Something nice and safe. Of course, there were the distances I was traveling on my own for work, navigating the freeway systems of Southern California---which was no small feat---so there was always a fresh crop of worries. (Oh, if only she knew!) But they were manageable compared to what they could have been.
One would think that after I was safely "married off", my mother could sit back, breathe a sigh of relief and transfer the job of worrying onto the broad and capable shoulders of my husband. Who would then have shrugged them off permanently to rot on the side of the road. But marriage wasn't the end of the worry road for me mum. Well, I suppose marriage itself might have been but once children entered the scene, there were new levels of worry. To this day, if I go away for a weekend with a girlfriend, say, my mother frets. In the beginning, when I would go somewhere, she would say, "But what if something happens to you? What will your kids do? They'll be without a mom!" She has since said less and less but I know that the worry is there. It comes off of her in waves, like garlic.
When I know that I'm planning such a getaway, I fret about when to tell my mom (because there's not really any way of not telling her. We live close to each other and talk practically every day. It would be an obvious omission and would hurt her feelings, even if the motivation was only to spare her the worry). Timing is critical. If I tell her too early, her worries will infect me and rob me of any fun anticipation. They fuel my own worries because, yes, I now have the same ones. If I tell her too late, it would be---like I mentioned---an obvious omission. I know, I know. I'm an adult. But I don't like to hurt people's feelings if it can be avoided, especially my mother's.
I regret that I'm making her out to be someone psychotic. She isn't. She just lives with the disease of worry. It has crippled her in many ways and has managed to mangle me in maybe just as many. It's a cancer I'm desperate to stop. I'm trying to figure out just how this illness starts, what feeds it and how it grows so that I don't infect my children. If I can give them a gift, I want to give them the courage to do what they want and to go wherever they feel the urge to fly---whatever state, country, whatever continent or planet. I'll be here at home base, perhaps in a puddle of fear and worry for what might befall them---it's a powerful fear. But let me hold my tongue! Let me be silent and give them wings that are healthy and strong and daring.
Fly, baby, fly.
