A guardian angel protects two young girls in their daily life in Fort Worth, Texas. Parents are all too familiar with the sort of anxiety that can subconsciously nag at you all day long, before really kicking in at night. While we're up and about and keeping busy, it's possible to shush the parental panic that ever resides just below our breastbones -- that is implanted within us at our children's births.
It begins as a seed that we water and over-water with our worst fears and deepest imaginings of all the ways they are vulnerable, all the ways kids can be hurt either physically or emotionally or in the psyche. Hurt by the world in all its vagaries. Hurt by us, too, no matter how perfect we try to be.
These anxieties burst fully into flower once you've crawled into bed, when every distant siren pulls at the gut, and every unanswered text indicates catastrophe, until you finally hear your new driver pull into the driveway, or your nearly year-old one texts you that he is safely home.
I wish I could tell you that the worries and the angst go away once your kids have made it into adulthood and proved themselves to be responsible, mostly-sane people.
I once knew a woman -- a very smart, balanced college professor and social worker -- who, after a family gathering, instructed her five grown children to call her when they'd arrived safely home. And that's exactly what they did. Five phone calls, one after the other, all making fun of me, but I slept well that night! When I wondered if bad weather had caused her to make such an explicit demand of her middle-aged children she said, "No. I just always need to know they're safe.
