I was prepared for motherhood to change me in myriad ways. I thought the adage, ‘Life will never be the same,’ meant that my body, sense of humor and priorities would be different. But one thing I never counted on is that since the birth of my son, I’ve gone from dare-devil to worry-wart.

I have become my mother.

It’s a family joke that mom is known for phrases like, “Be careful. Slow down. Don’t run. You’re going to fall.”

For a kid like me, this was impossible. There are home movies of our old Rambler station wagon pulled over at a rest stop on a road trip. My six-year-old sister is desultorily jumping rope. My four-year-old self is without rope: simply, gleefully jumping. What has always defined me was moving for the sheer joy of it.

I graduated to cartwheels, to veering down the hill on a bike with handlebar streamers flying out behind me, to jumping on planes. To anywhere. I’d buy a “Lonely Planet” Guide, get a ticket and figure arrangements out when I got there.

That was me. Before motherhood. Now slowly, I’ve come to accept that I am no longer the ‘give me a destination and I’ll go there-girl’: Hong Kong, Katmandu, all the better. Now I’d just as soon not drive on the freeway.

This is not even the worst part. I’m not just the garden-variety “Do we have enough diaps, wipes, sunscreen, juice and goldfish?” kind of mom-worrier. The “Do you think we should do X now so he’ll nap, or Z to ward off a fuss?”

My secret confession is that I’ve become absorbed with stories of children’s accidents. Detail by horrifying detail, I pour over the news of children: swept out to sea by sneaker riptides, falling out un-screened hotel windows, smothered by collapsing sand dunes. Has there been an extra slew of these things? More coverage in the news? How could I have lived my entire life and never noticed these stories before?

Reading, I swing from looking for someone to blame; ‘Where was that parent? Why weren’t they paying attention?’ to the deepest of sympathy. To shame. How many times have I made one more phone call, read one more e-mail while I vaguely knew the whereabouts of my son? How many lapses of attention could have resulted in these same horrors? Finally, I’ve come to understand my own mother’s anxiety.

Along with the expansiveness of giving birth, the unavoidable truth about mortality has slowed my life down.

So when my husband finds me an over-worrying nag, I try to clue him in to the accident stories. This hyper-vigilance must be hard-wired into us mothers, I tell him: survival of the species and all. My mind crunches out possibilities of disaster scenarios; this calculation of odds and dangers, it’s always with me. I try to strike a balance between healthy watchfulness and respect for the survivor’s tragedies. The least that I can do is to use them for perspective, to be grateful for all the gifts of motherhood, even the baby spit-up that’s gone down my back and into my shoe.

In the meantime, riveted, I scan the headlines. The same way my mother used to scan the horizon, waiting for me to come home. I hold the stories out in front of me, like a talisman, pretending I can keep us all safe from harm.

By Mary Beth McClure

Labels: Mary Beth McClure

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