Night Thoughts

Yesterday, my twenty-seven year-old son, Joseph, sent me his upcoming itinerary to South Africa and Malawi. Joe’s doing another documentary and this will be his fifth trip back to a continent with stories that seem to call out to him to film.

Of course, this lead to my being awake at 2:15am tossing and turning, worrying about his trip, him being there a month, some of the sketchy places where he will be filming. I know he knows what he’s doing, but I’m his mother. And a mother always worries…

As the clock turned to 3am straight-up, I was reminded of my mother’s sage words the night before I had my first child thirty-four years ago:  “Sleep well, Heather, because this will be your last night of good sleep for the rest of your life.”

Swell, I thought.

Would I feel more comfortable with Joseph working a 9-to-5? Probably. But, that’s not going to happen. Really, it’s all about his passions and goals – not my comfort. And are there any “safe” places anymore? He’s an adult. It’s out of my hands. “This is the goal,” a friend once said to me “to raise them to be independent.”

Sometime around 3:20, I thought about all those other mothers out there with sleepless nights. Those brave mothers with adult children in the armed forces…the police force…an adult son or daughter walking the beams of a high-rise under construction…mothers whose children are journalists and photographers in war-torn areas.

Then, I turned to one of my calming prayers. That didn't seem to do the trick.

At 4:05, I debated just getting up, as I ticked through the details of Joe’s itinerary as if that would give me some peace.  It only made it worse. What if this? What if that?

What did give me peace were the words of James A. Garfield.

       Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in

                         darkness disappear like owls and bats before the light of day.

At 6am, I rose and padded through the house to my computer in the sunroom. I reread Joe’s itinerary.

        “I’m excited,” he’d written. I could feel the energy he gets when he is doing what propels him.

        “And, so am I for you…” I typed, then, pressed send.

Found this doodle on the notepad by the kitchen telephone after Joe stopped by the other day.