I’ve become her. That parent. The one who freaks out.

I swore I would never be her. I would be cool. I would be relaxed.

But there I was, pacing, feeling as though I was going to puke, my heart in the pit of my stomach.

Where are you? Where are you?

************************************

My eight-year-old daughter spent the night with a friend. At 9:00 the morning after, I received a call from her friend’s mother saying that they needed to run a few errands and would bring Hannah home shortly after.

Given that this woman’s eldest son had a class downtown from 10:30-12:00, I expected Hannah home around 1:00. When 3:00 came around and my daughter was still not home, I called their house and got no answer. At 4:00, when it began snowing heavily, I started to get a little worried. At 4:52, I finally received a phonecall.

Had I been the parent in charge of someone else’s child for the day, I would have placed several calls. But that’s me. Perhaps I’m a little neurotic. Maybe other mothers don’t get worried when they don’t hear about their child all day long. Maybe other mothers don’t begin to wonder if their child is lying in a hospital bed from injuries sustained in a car accident, or worse.

This mom is very laid back, though, the complete antithesis of someone like me. In a way, I envy her. *I should state that I have NO doubts about this woman’s qualifications to parent her own children. And my daughter always has an excellent time at their house, despite the fact that she serves carrots and hummus and nuts for lunch, which my daughter says does nothing to satiate hunger.*

Sigh.

I suppose a part of me is a little bit jealous of those types of people who just go with the flow. Okay, a BIG part of me is a LOT jealous. I surprised my husband the other night when I told him that, even when I was Hannah’s age, my friends would often tell me that I was no fun to be around. That could have been due to the fact that I shouldered the burden of parenting a drunk parent and often flew under the radar of an emotionally distant step-father and a maniacal real one. I was loads of fun.

When this woman called me at 4:52 to say that she and her children would be walking Hannah home through the woods, I freaked a little. I even called her back to say I would just drive over to pick up Hannah. It’s cold and windy out. She doesn’t have her snowpants or a hat or mittens.

Don’t worry, she said. I’ll outfit her in proper clothes. She’ll arrive nice and toasty.

Of course. Because she is responsible. She wouldn’t let her own children traipse through the snow without proper protection, so why would she let mine?

And there they were, about 40 minutes later, the lot of them coming down the hill: mom with toddler son swaddled across her back, Hannah and friend waving and laughing, eldest son (hair almost as long as mine in a braid) and friend, one dog, one cat. Rosy cheeks. Smiles.

I was so happy to see my daughter, and I was so happy to see this . . . .  spectacular vision of familial bonding. The typical “granola” Ithacan family.

I wish that was my family.

I wish I could be that type of mother.

The mother studying to be a midwife, who wears a wool cap covering loose braids, who makes a rough, unfinished house feel cozy, who has a barn, who homeschools, who straps her three year old to her back, who serves carrots and hummus, whose children seem perfectly well-behaved and quietly observant.

And then there’s me: the mother who is uptight about everything, who can’t relax enough to have fun, who would never think to go hiking through the woods on a cold, snowy day, who abides by a strict schedule, who constantly feels the pains of heart palpitations and phantom ulcers. One would think I thrive on stress; It’s just that I’ve never known otherwise. 

I don’t know what I would do with a quiet house. I don’t know what I would do with older children who didn’t engage in physical fights on a daily basis or a son who didn’t constantly antagonize anything with a pulse, or a toddler who didn’t consistently hold in her poop to the point of a weekly bout with constipation, or a brood whose automatic answer to my every request is ”no.” What is it like to really have fun with your kids, not just go through the motions because that’s what a good mom is supposed to do? I feel sorry for my kids, because I am no fun. And it’s difficult to just become fun. This is me. This is my personality. My poor children got stuck with me when they should have inherited someone far more patient and “young” and less serious.

She made me blueberry pancakes and painted my fingernails! We jumped on the trampoline until we saw the moon . . .