The One Thing You Worry About

It’s been a rough week.  A call from the Rez Nurse to tell me that Cliffy had passed away.  Of course, she caught me up on all the rez gossip.  My ex-boyfriend passed away four years ago, but she hadn’t called to let me know since she figured I wouldn’t give a damn anyway.  The sad news was that his son had passed away a few years prior; the word was that he was a victim of the rampant drugs and alcohol on the rez.

                Rez Nurse and I must have spent over an hour on the phone, crying, laughing, and remembering.  Her Minnesota rez accent took me backwards in time, making the grief even deeper.  Too many what-ifs, and why didn’t they?

                 Dad passed away in 1996. I lost my mother in 2000, and Lilly was born two years later. I was familiar with grief by the time she was born. I was too young to lose my parents; at 33 and then 37, I felt like I was not ready to be an orphan. Is anyone really ready? 

                When Lilly was a baby, I desperately wanted my parents to be with me.  Dad would have told me everything would be okay.  Mom would have said what she always said when I catastrophized and anticipated the worst.

                “The one thing you worry about the most is the one thing that will probably never happen.”

                As a child, that comforted me.  Mom had a way of saying things that made sense, her calmness reassuring in a crisis.  Now I wonder where she got that saying from?  Was it a lesson she learned the hard way, or just a bunch of words to console a child? 

                My fear, as a new mother at thirty-nine, almost forty, was leaving Lilly alone.  While I was still married, I worried because I knew the Bowling Ball could not or would not care for Lilly.  He wouldn’t be able to support her financially, and I pictured him dumping her off with his father and stepmother to be raised.  I knew that no one else in the world would love my child as deeply as I did. I also knew that parents died, even when their children still needed them.

                Like all young children, I had believed parents would always be there.  Then, realizing mortality one day, and having an existential crisis, I burst into tears.  I was a child, unable to reconcile my existence in a world without my parents.  Mom held me close and promised me, “I won’t die until you don’t need me anymore.”

                Mom lied, but at the time, I was comforted.  After the divorce, the reality of my own mortality set in.  I was one unbuckled seat belt away from leaving my child alone in a cruel and uncaring world.  I papered my home desk with copies naming Greg and my nephew Gus as guardians for Lilly.  I listed all of Donna’s children as secondary guardians, as well as Donna, Tubby, and Cathy.  I became obsessed with making sure Lilly had a safety net in case anything happened to me.

                “He’s still the legal parent; there is no way the court would award me custody if he’s still alive,” Greg said.

                I told Greg where to find the manila envelope with photos, copies of instant messages, and printed emails that I had shown my divorce attorney. 

                “Do what you gotta do,” I told him.  “He might want her for the Social Security benefits he can get from her, the loss of a parent, and the “disabled for life” diagnosis from the federal standards.”

                “I don’t care about the money,” Greg said.

                “Exactly!  Throw the money at him, and he will chase it like a dog after a bone.  He doesn’t want her; he will dump her off with his dad, but the money is what he wants.  You give him the money, and he will back down.  She’s the beneficiary of my life insurance, and you are the assigned executor for her as a minor.  You can use that if you need.”

                Greg could be at my house in two days, or twenty-four hours if he didn’t sleep.  He could have Lilly and Bingo-Bunny out of the county in a few hours and ensconced safely in a small town in Minnesota.  In the meantime, I had Christy watch Lilly until he came.  I was obsessed until I had the perfect plan.  In the meantime, I had to make Lilly independent and able to take care of herself.

                I remembered the story of my mother’s abandonment.  Left time after time by their parents, Mom and her siblings had to figure things out themselves.  Did Grandma Grow have the same memories from her childhood? Had she been left to fend for herself too young and forced to find her way?  Is that why she married so young to an older man?  Is that why her parenting was cold and withdrawn?  She set her daughter, my mother, up for a lifetime of feeling loss and abandonment. A fear that at any time, the people she depended upon would leave.  

                Was that what made Mom such a morbid planner?  She was always thinking of jobs she could do if Dad died suddenly.  She made Dad sit down and make plans if she died giving birth to me.  That must have been quite a feat. Dad excelled in avoiding sensitive topics.  She paid into the Lutheran Association for life insurance while I was a minor child. I find that quite insulting. Did she know that my siblings would have to be bribed to take care of me?  

                Mom always blamed my worrying on Dad’s side of the family; his mother was “anxious,” “a fussy woman,” and “nervous”.  She pronounced that sagely, ignoring the mental illness and generational trauma of her own family. Mom fueled herself with anger, nicotine, caffeine, and worry.  Dad seemed to float through life, willing to accept whatever crumbs fate threw his way.   I am my mother’s daughter when I let myself be.

                As my mind whirled with tragedies and horror, my outside had to stay calm.  Lilly had to think that everything was all right in the world.  I refused to let Lilly know my fears.  It stopped with me.  But Lilly had a way of bringing me back to reality and ground level.  Lilly had her own concerns.

                “Why does Ayden have two belly buttons?” She demanded to know after Headstart.

                Oh, dear Lord, I thought to myself, what is this about?  Why is my child comparing belly buttons at Head Start? What does she mean exactly by second belly button?

                “What do you mean, two belly buttons?”

                “He showed me his belly button today, and he said he is special because he has two belly buttons and nobody else does.  Why does he get an extra belly button and I don’t?”

                What I had here was a full-blown case of belly button envy.  To establish his superiority, Ayden must have pulled his Ace in the hole, an extra belly button.  Something Lilly did not have and never would.    From time spent with Ayden, I assumed that his final word on belly buttons was inspired by something Lilly had started.  Knowing Lilly as I did, it could have been something like:

                “I have long hair, and you don’t because you are a boy!”

                No red-blooded American boy would have stood for that.  Ayden did what he had to do and showed the dual belly buttons.  Fortunately, I knew exactly what the second belly button was and how he had gotten it. 

                “You know the pictures of you in the NICU when you have the tube in your nose?  That tube was for feeding you formula because you were too little to drink yet, right?  Well, Ayden was in a different NICU, and there they put the tube in his belly and fed him that way.  So, it looks like a belly button, but it's just where the feeding tube hole went”.

                “He’s not an alien?”

                Note to self, I said silently, no more letting Lilly crawl into bed with Mama and watch movies on Saturday night.

                “No, he’s not an alien.  It’s just a scar from his feeding tube, right next to his real belly button.  But if he wants to call it a second belly button, you let him call it that, okay?”

                The next drama that caused Lilly to have extreme anxiety and distress came from her friend Patrick.  Patrick was louder, one of those little boys who was wound like a spring, full of energy.  He was also a sweetie pie, who would often come up to me and hold my hand, just happy to say “Hi” and then run off to play.  He and Ayden were Ying and Yang, and Lilly was in the middle of the little boy tornado.  Lilly hated being teased for her friendships, telling people they were her boy-friends, not her boyfriends. 

“I am not old enough to have a boyfriend.”

                Patrick also loved having something to hold over Lilly.  He built extravagant Lego projects with his dad.  Lilly could barely get three Legos to stay together and envied his skills.  She was jealous when Patrick had surgery, and his mom made him special smoothies.  Until I made her a smoothie to drink and then explained that Patrick had to have those every day until he got better, she agreed that it wouldn’t be fun, but still gave me a look of disdain, letting me know that I didn’t measure up to Karen in the mama department.  I put Karen on my list of people to call for Lilly in case anything happens to me.

                Then came the day when Lilly’s distress over something that Patrick had told her almost blew their friendship apart.  I picked her up from daycare, where she went after a morning of Headstart. 

                Lilly was sullen and serious, obviously thinking about something.  She didn’t start talking immediately, so I waited until we hit the highway.  I knew she would mull it over in her mind until she came up with the right way to present her case.  Lilly had a way of presenting a case that absolved her of any blame.  I knew I might as well get it out of the way; hopefully, the drive home would give us enough time.  I had dinner to make, homework to oversee, and I didn’t want a sullen Lilly to take up the entire evening.

                “How was your day?  Did you learn anything today?”

                Lilly was quiet for a second, and then the words came tumbling out in anger.

                “Why does Patrick get a day?  And why does everyone have to dress up for him?  He said everyone knows about it, and it's on the calendar and everything.  Why did his mom give him a special day, and why does everyone have to stop, bring special food, and wear green clothes for Patrick?”

                I couldn’t laugh.  Lilly hated it when she thought someone was laughing at her and would burst into tears.  It was March 16^th.  The daycare was preparing to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with decorations and a party.  Everyone would have been told to wear green for St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, and they would have a party.  Lilly’s friend Patrick was no saint; he was also not above a “neener-neener” or two at Lilly.  Tomorrow was “his” day, and they were all going to have a party for him.  Lilly didn’t need to wear green; she was already green with envy.

                As I pictured the scene, admiring Patrick for his confidence, Lilly interrupted my thoughts.

                “Do I have a special day?”

                Well, crap. There was no St. Lillian I knew of to console her. I couldn’t invent a holiday for Lilly’s day. And after seeing her in the time-out chair repeatedly at Headstart, I doubted she’d ever qualify for sainthood. Yet, I didn’t want to take away the special day for sweet Patrick.

                “There’s a famous person from a very long time ago, and his name was Patrick.  So, every year, people celebrate St. Patrick.  And your friend Patrick was named after that man, so in a way, it is Patrick’s day.  Because he shares his name with somebody famous, and you don’t.  Patrick will have his day every year; he’s lucky, isn’t he?”

                Lilly seemed comfortable with my explanation.  Now she was part of the secret; the day wasn’t named after her friend Patrick, but some old man who died a long time ago.

                “But if Patrick wants to say it’s his day, we are gonna let him, okay?  It’s cool to have a friend who is named after somebody important, isn’t it?”

                Lilly agreed to keep our talk a secret and not spoil Patrick’s day.  She knew the truth, and she and I would keep the secret.  Years later, driving with a teenage Lilly into Reno, I pointed out the road sign reading “Patrick Road.”

                “Oh no,” Lilly said, “don’t tell Patrick, he will never let me forget it!”

                Lilly’s childhood drama was silly and meaningless.  But to her, it was very real.  She had issues, and I had to work through them with her.  If I spent my time worrying about a future that probably would never happen, I wouldn’t be available to help her work through the drama and stress of childhood.

                I had to be present.  I couldn’t spend my life worrying about a bleak future.  Lilly grounded me in the moment.  I had already done what I could, and my affairs were in order as much as I could control.  Now, I had to let it go and live in reality.  Reality was a little girl trying to make her way in the world.  Reality was that I had a beautiful, healthy child, something that had never been a given.

                  After all, the one thing you worry about the most is likely never to happen.