When I was in college, and away from home, I used to be so annoyed with my mother.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” she’d say glibly. I didn’t know how she meant it, but I assumed it to be a tiny jab at my expense for not being more communicative; as well as a liberal amount of self defense – maybe a window into how a mother’s anxiety evolves by degrees as her children neglect to call or write after leaving the nest.
In the days of landlines, before caller ID, she’d answer the phone, hear my voice, and ask: “What-do-you-want?” as if the question contained only one word but was loaded with angst.
It would always set me on edge. My knee-jerk reply was always to say I didn’t want anything. I just wanted to check-in. I would then take time to meander through pleasantries and a retelling of a parent-friendly escapade before getting, invariably, to the point – the real reasons I was calling home … whatever it was that had gone wrong.
I think of her often these days, usually as I settle in for an evening of night-time television viewing, or before retiring to bed at what seems like an impossibly early hour.
Days and nights go by. We don’t hear from our worldly firstborn.
For the past few weeks, we've had scant news from our college student. A text here, letting me know showing me two pictures: a baking sheet full of vegetables, and the soup they became was very yummy; and a text there, telling me a social event she had planned – Dogs, Donuts, and Democracy – as part of her duties as Resident Assistant to encourage voting, and which included Campus Police puppies, Munchkins and hand-outs on how to apply for absentee ballots was also well received.
I still worry.
But I also console myself using the same words I heard my mother say: Bad news travels fast.
Which is why my heart jumps into my throat whenever her face lights up my phone.
No matter what the interwebs or TikTok or Googly-peg tell you, ANY phone call from your newly-adult children will raise your heart rate no matter what time of day it arrives. Maybe especially at the ungodly twenty-something hours of 8 a.m.
I did not panic.
“Hey! How’s it going?” I answer, trying to keep my voice calm.
She dispenses with small talk and gets to the point.
“When you replaced the tires, do you remember which you replaced?”
Of course, I couldn’t remember. With three cars that have been my responsibility to maintain over the past four years, it seems like all I have done recently is buy new tires for cars I don’t drive.
“Why?” I asked tightly, worried she was calling from a roadside with four flat tires and cars cartoonishly piling up in the aftermath.
“Because I’ve had to replace the air in a few of them two or three times in the last few months. It’s starting to worry me. Can you ask Dad?”
I try not to let on that the last bit annoys me. Not only had I been the one to handle car maintenance, but how many times had she been with me as I pressure-tested tires, or filled them up when the sensors alerted me to a slow leak?
This is my wheelhouse.
I can hear her voice relax when I tell her not to worry. And for the next twenty or so minutes as she carries me around the gas station air pump, reading the pressure for each tire into the phone, she tells me about her day, her worries, and her petty grievances.
“These are all fine.”
Pressures are relieved all around.
