A mother's worries

Moms worry. Type-A moms really worry. And Type-A moms of highly spirited children really, really worry.

She arrived innocuously enough, during the first snowstorm of the season. For many months her babyish peacefulness belied her true nature.

Then she learned to run. She skipped right over walking, throwing herself across our tiny living room, ricocheting from couch to chair to love seat like a human rubber ball.

I couldn't control her. She ran away from me in the grocery store, turning at the end of the aisle to laugh at me. She loved attention and would stand on our deck singing homemade songs at the top of her lungs to anyone who would listen (usually just me). She climbed on the back of the couch and banged the front window with both hands, World! I'm here! She refused to sit for story time or dinnertime or to cuddle. I began to see her as lacking in self-control, manipulative, and desperate for attention. My friends suggested she might have ADD and then, yes, there it was. Of course.

I not only worried that her future held, at a minimum, a life of free-spirited hedonism, I worried about the world in which she lived. We avoided large gatherings of children, superfluous outings during flu season, grocery carts.

I watched her fingers to make sure long hairs weren't accidentally wrapped around one, cutting off circulation, kept a constant vigil against food preservatives, white sugar, and mean kids. I dreaded inexplicable fevers.

Yes, mothers worry. But one day you wake up and that bouncy, bubbly, completely exasperating daughter stands on the cusp of 16, pondering her first real job and planning her future. She cleans her room every week and sits still all the way through church. At the store, she not only stays by your side but also reminds you that you're almost out of baking soda, eggs, and toilet paper. She is well-liked and confident. The light in every room, she spills over with joy, plans, and wild ideas.

When I see a young mom chasing her child in the store, I want to tell her not to worry. It's all going to go so fast. One moment she's going to be chasing that rascally child, worried sick that her little girl is going to end up a brat or die young or be disliked or be too impulsive or have addictive tendencies or never develop self-control, and the next moment she's going to be planning a Sweet 16 birthday party for a young woman who, despite scaring her mother half to death with her impulsive, frenetic, and rambunctious childhood, has actually turned into a pretty incredible young woman.