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New beginnings, new worries

4 min read

For those four days, the little dot on the screen was everything. I would follow it as it moved across the field, following highways and side roads as it passed from one state to the next: first Ohio, and then all those “I” states and into Nebraska and Colorado. When the dot stopped moving at night, I could finally sleep, but not until then.

The dot was my son as he made his way across the country. Last weekend, he packed up his car and drove to California to begin a new job and life for a television production company. I didn’t ask to be included on the travel app, and the fact he shared it says a lot about how hard I’m taking these miles that now lie between us, and how well he understands that about me.

It’s a really good job, and it would have been wrong for him not to take it. That’s what I told myself when he first interned there last summer and suggested he might go back for full-time work. My thoughts were about it being too far, but I didn’t say them out loud. When a man is 24, he doesn’t need to be mothered, and nor does he want it. But my anxiety wouldn’t let me remain totally quiet.

“You’re driving all that way alone?” I asked, hoping he would come to his own conclusion that 2,400 is a lot of miles to drive by oneself. He assured me he would be fine.

“If you’re tired, pull over,” I said. Again, he assured me he would do so.

It didn’t help matters when he shared that in order to save on hotels, he might camp along the way. My worries turned from his falling asleep behind the wheel to being eaten by bears. When that felt too extreme, I spun my anxiety Rolodex to the card about Lyme disease.

When the worries became too much, I did what I tend to do: I tossed money at my anxiety. Money for hotels, money for insecticide, for coffee, for whatever he might need to get him safely to his destination.

“I’ve got money, Mama,” he would say. I put the money into his account anyway, and followed up with reminders. If you’re drowsy, pull over. Don’t let yourself rest your eyes even for a second.

He always reassured me. That seems to have been his part in our relationship all along. When every ride in the car together included my coaching him through his life, he would reassure me.

“I know, Mama,” he would say. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t do drugs. I won’t get in trouble.”

You would think that by now, after 24 years of knowing this person, I would relax a bit; I’d be able to sit back in my chair for once, not lean forward into the anxiety that’s waiting like a dark cloud above my head. He’s finally on his way – to a job that pays well and that will give him stability and the creative outlet he’s always craved.

He finally pulled in to his new apartment one evening around 7. I had watched the dot on the screen all day as it moved southward through California. He called when he finally arrived, just as he’d promised.

“I made it,” he said. “You can relax now.”

As if. That dot on the screen is no longer moving, but it’s still way over there, thousands of miles away from me and out of reach, as is the wonderful young man attached to it.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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