Fear

I bought my first baseball mitt--or is it a glove?--and I'm trying. Really trying. "How do you teach a kid to catch, or to bat?" I asked L's best friend's dad at the game this morning. "You just keep doing it with them, and one day it clicks," he said, and it sounded easy. Which it is, for him: he can catch with his eyes closed. I, though, am afraid of the ball. Maybe the click works both ways.

A few days ago, one town over, a little boy was waiting for the school bus and a guy in a pickup truck stopped and tried to persuade the kid to climb into the truck. Kid ran, parents called the cops, and it's been all over the local news for days. This morning the local police offered this to parents: don't let your children wait for the school bus or walk to school by themselves.

When we're in the grocery store, I send the kids afield by an aisle or two, item by item, to help shop. M runs to get the milk, because she knows to check the dates. L gets the bananas, because he knows we buy them green and unbruised. It's only recently that I've let them do this, and every time they run off I have to recite my reasons to myself: I can't raise them to be afraid: there's no crime in this town: they're old enough to scream: people would see them struggle and intervene. My heart beats a little faster when they turn a corner out of sight, and I feel something internal--a kind of radar, or tether--and feel my connection to them as a physical thing. The longer they're out of sight the more the strain wears, and if they're out of sight for more than 45 seconds or so, I start to move toward the milk or the bananas. As I'm moving, I play out every awful scenario, and self-check against that internal tether, wondering if I'd actually feel it--if I'd actually know if an awfulness came into our lives.

I just sent L off to NYC with a friend from school and his family; birthday celebration--they're going to the Pokemon Center and a pizza lunch and a visit to some candy store. It didn't occur to me for a minute to say he couldn't go--not for a minute, until the mother told me that the mother of the other child they'd invited didn't feel comfortable sending her son into the city.

"What rules do you have to remember?" I'd asked L before they arrived to pick him up. Blank stare in return. "What do you do if you get separated from the grownups?" I asked him.

He stared for a second. "I don't know," he said, though I've told him so many times.

"Find a grownup who works at the store and tell them you can't find Mrs. Maloney," I said.

"Right. OK," he says, and they pull in and he hops into the car, and doesn't even kiss me goodbye because people are watching. I'm waving and trying to remember: when did I get my last kiss from him? It was this morning, after I washed his hair.

Feeling the tether.