In Which I Admit I'm a Little Crazy

Image credit: Photo by anyjazz65 on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

My son wanted to go to bed early the other night. Now you wouldn't think that this would be cause for alarm. There are lots of good reasons for him to be tired. Summer break is over. Fourth grade has started. The kids are no longer on a lazy summer schedule. Add the fact that cold germs are flying around, and maybe you have a kid whose immune system is fighting off some annoying but relatively harmless virus. So he's tired. And he asks to go to bed early. Think nothing of it.

Unless you're me, that is. This is An Event Out Of The Ordinary! And whether the Event Out Of The Ordinary is Mark coming home late or Austen going to bed early, these things are Bad (yes, with a capital B). In this case, my money was on leukemia. Either that or some horrible irreversible disease caused by the fact that Austen's diet is so limited.

Ordinarily, I don't share these things with anyone outside of my husband, because the inevitable response (even, to a more limited extent, from Mark, who at least keeps loving me anyway) is: you're crazy, you're so overreacting, he's just tired, and I'm somewhat disturbed by your craziness, so I'll just go stand over here now. Or... If you're so worried about it, you should work harder and do better. Clearly his diet is limited because of your awful laziness and lack of discipline and willpower. People like you are ruining America and are personally responsible for my unhappiness. I demand that you fix this, and if you just [insert long list of advice that hasn't worked yet and/or recommendation to focus solely on this goal to the exclusion of the needs of all other family members], all the world's problems would be solved.

So, it's tiresome, this admitting of strange, secret, niggling fears. It feels like walking a mile carrying a hundred pound weight (which, by the way, wouldn't be so hard if you stayed in better shape, MPJ, so stop complaining). In fact, it's so very tiresome, that I've spent my entire life not telling people (aside from a trusted few) that if my son asks to go to bed early, I secretly think he might have leukemia. And that I might even go so far as to stand next to his bed, biting my bottom lip, my hand hovering over his sleeping head to see if I feel a fever.

Austen is fine, of course. After a few nights of early bedtime, he has been his usual cheerful, energetic self. And I'm fairly certain (well, ok, maybe I will be in a few days) that he doesn't have any life threatening disease at the moment. But I'm also fairly certain that the next time he says his stomach is upset, I'll be biting my lip and furrowing my brows, thinking I may have been wrong last time, but this time...

The one thing I feel I can never be certain of, until the very moment I hit publish, is whether or not sending my whispers of imperfection out along distant electronic tendrils of this universe -- and the relief and recognition and connection and not-aloneness it might bring somewhere -- is worth walking a mile with that damn weight. This summer, it wasn't. But, today, it's back to school time, and unlike my kids, I feel like I have all the energy in the world.