You're Giving Me a Heart Attack

The other day the mother of my daughter Lucia’s friend Jane called me. I don’t know her. We’ve said hello at a soccer game and texted a few times to coordinate where the girls are sleeping over on the weekend, but we’re not really friends.

I miss the days when I knew the parents of Lucia’s friends. I miss dropping her off and picking her up; coming inside to say hello or goodbye. Once Lucia started high school the parental meet and greet fizzled out. The kids were more independent. They made plans on their own — more informing the parents than making a plan with our help.

I’m used to it now but often on the weekends when Lucia is sleeping at a friend’s house I worry. When Jane’s mother called me the other day, I was surprised. When I picked up the call, I asked right away, “Is everything okay?”

“Well, ah,” she said, “Jane isn’t answering my calls and Jane’s friend Mary called to tell me that Jane’s car broke down. I don’t know why Jane isn’t calling me herself. I keep trying her and she isn’t picking up.”

I wondered too. There was no school the next day and I knew the girls had gone to soccer practice and were then going to go to a party. They had been hanging out at my house just a few hours before the call.

“Let me call Lucia,” I said, “They were just here and maybe she’ll answer her phone.” 

After a few attempts, I reached Lucia. She breathlessly answered the phone, “Mom, did you hear?” and proceeded to detail a story about how Jane’s car had died in the middle of an intersection and they were stranded. She told me how a man stopped to help them, jumping Jane’s car long enough to get to their Mary’s house. But just as they were pulling in to park, Jane’s car died again and they’d had to push the car another block to get it into a parking spot.

They were okay. Lucia told me that Jane was, at that moment, also on the phone with her mother.

I called Jane’s mother back to check in. Her voice was distracted and far away. I felt for her. I’ve been where she was in that moment. She was in the aftermath of intense worry. Behind the frustration and anger of not being able to reach her daughter, she had been experiencing a crushing maternal fear.

A few years ago Lucia didn’t answer her phone for hours while she was at a Halloween party. The images that went through my head — abduction, date rape, drowning, car accident, passed out from a head injury, alcohol or drug overdose — overwhelmed me. The inside of my head was like a boxing match of terrible possibilities. 

These catastrophic visions were all taking up space in my brain, occupying the airwaves so the most terrible thought of all — that my daughter was gone — couldn’t get through. 

It is the greatest fear, the one that is always there. That my child will somehow no longer be my child. That something horrible will happen when she is away from me and I will never see her again. It’s extreme worry, intense anxiety, yet I feel like it is totally normal. It’s what I imagined Jane’s mother was experiencing when she couldn’t reach her daughter.

My daughter is a confident, competent, independent young woman, and most of the time I feel like she is okay. I trust that, in most situations, she is going to be fine. But every once in a while that deep fear of the worst emerges. In those moments, the possibility that everything could go horribly, dreadfully wrong takes over. It’s like a mini heart attack — fluttering in my gut, clenching in my chest, and pressure behind my eyes. 

When the moment of panic is over, after I’ve confirmed that all is well with my daughter, there is still the residue from the experience. I feel drained, exhausted, raw with the emotion of almost losing her. In less than two years Lucia will be away at college; she will be far more out of touch than she is now. I’ll have zero control over her whereabouts or whether she contacts me to check-in. This time right now is preparing me for that more profound letting go.

Lucia is very good about staying in touch and responding if I reach out to her by text. But I’m also way better and letting her go a little bit further, for a little bit longer. I am building my threshold for being out of touch with her and letting her life be a little bit more of a mystery to me. I’m excited about her future and I know that from here on out most of her adventures will be without me. She’s ready for this next chapter and I have to be ready too. 

I notice a difference in my level of worry from years past. I don’t suffer the parade of terrible possibilities like I used to when I didn’t know Lucia’s whereabouts. But I still have moments. I know when Lucia is away at college I’ll still have little mini-heart attacks or worry. I imagine even when she’s fully launched, maybe even with her own family, I’ll have periodic heart-stopping worries from time to time. I don’t expect that feeling will ever fully go away. It’s just part of being a mother.