Another shot

 It's 9 p.m. My eyes dart from the television to my watch, and, finally, to a window that looks out over the driveway. Waiting and uncertainty cause my stress levels -- now quantified and reported by the proprietary technology on my wrist -- to spike.

Several times already, lights from traffic on the road out front tricked me into thinking her car pulled into the driveway. Each time, my heartbeat inches higher momentarily and then retreats. I let out the breath I've been holding in, only to imprison it once again.

My body and mind will figure-eight through this pattern until the door swings open and my firstborn child walks through the door, smelling of pizza and sauce and sounding her delight or displeasure her hours of restaurant service has wrought.

This moment feels normal and celebratory and panic-inducing all in one shot.

She flops down on the couch and pulls out a fistful of wrinkled bills. She tells me she is starving as she smooths the cash and starts to count: Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty.

Not a bad haul for a Tuesday.

I start a pot of water for pasta as she tells me about all the outrages and intrigues. And the curious story of the asymmetrical piling of pizza boxes how it caused her to burn her wrist.

A Connecticut-shaped welt on her arm looks about as angry as a bad sunburn. Commissary loves company.

"Maybe you should ice it," I suggest as I break a fist-full of angel hair into the boil.

"Do we have any paper towels? My boss says that wrapping wet towels around it is better."

I smile and nod.

It's official. I have joined the category of old wives who tell tales, I guess. The point is magnified by the fact that, as I type this, I am sitting in a hot car, in the parking lot of our pediatrician's office, banished from the annual proceedings by the onward march of maturity and a teenager's desire for independence.

I wonder what the doctor will say about the burn?

My level of panic is temporarily held at bay by a constant vigil at my smartphone's screen. I am at once afraid there will come a situation in which I will be needed, and anxious that there will be no need for me at all. My presence is on the wane.

Why does it always feel that we only get one shot? Maybe it's just in these moments of uncertainty, the moments where we have to cede control, where our minds hold us hostage. These are the moments of imminent change.

A parade of new parents with babies pass by my mobile waiting room.

I remember those days like they were yesterday. Though it concerns me a little as the time ticks by and those same parents make their round trip. There is still no word from my child.

And just as I look down at the screen, it lights up with a message. "You need to come in and sign for me to get a vaccine. The doctor says I need a parent or someone over 18 to give permission."

"See that ... There's always another shot."