From the Editor’s Desk: Mother (Premium)

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, my annual reminder that most people have a much healthier relationship with their parents than I do. But this Mother’s Day served as another unhappy reminder of the past when our son Mark, who planned weeks ago to visit for the occasion, passed out while driving here and found himself on the side of the road, scared and confused.

He’s probably OK. He was close enough to home when this happened that his friends came to pick him up so he didn’t have to drive anymore. And he spent the day, literally the entire day, in a hospital, taking tests, after first visiting an emergent care facility. Long story short, he appears to have a heart arrhythmia, which sounds scary, and is scary (to me), but is apparently common and easily treatable.

And that would all be well and good were it not for two mitigating factors. He’s deaf because of a near-fatal bout of bacterial meningitis at the age of one, and he had two cochlear implant surgeries at an early age to give him some semblance of hearing, so it’s not like he needs another medical condition. And I’m his dad, and I die a little bit inside every time something bad happens to him. Every single time.

And that, really, is the central paradox of being a parent, the one thing, ironically, my mother was right about on this topic. That no matter how old they are, no matter how mature or independent, they will always be your child. And you will always be afraid for their wellbeing. Feelings that can consume you if you’re not careful. Feelings that I believe to be amplified when you’ve held the lifeless body of that child in your arms when he was a baby, as I did, and can now never forget.

When I was a child myself, I had vivid dreams of me flying our neighborhood in Hyde Park, a suburb of Boston in which we lived before moving to Dedham when I was 7. Looking back on this now, I assume I had seen a movie or TV show depicting such a thing because my memories of these dreams still seem realistic to me, and it’s unclear how I could have possibly imagined this viewpoint at such an early age. But whatever the inspiration, it stuck with me, and whenever a group of kids would have that inevitable conversation about which superpower we’d pick if we could have one, my answer was always the same: I wanted to fly.

As an adult, I can’t say that I think about superpowers all that much. But in some ways I do, because I often think about whether I’d go back in time if I could and correct the mistakes of the past. Not little mistakes like personal embarrassments. Major mistakes. Like the circumstances that led to what would have been the death of our son had a particularly good doctor not realized what he was seeing, properly diagnosed what was then an impossibly rare condition, and saved his life.

The answer, ultimately, is no. Not because I don’t want to make things right, but because I would never deny my children the lives they’ve had and will have in the future. I would not change the past if it meant reversing anything else, which of course it would.

And Mark has had enormous success with his cochlear implants. He hears better than most with his condition and speaks clearly. And when we meet his deaf friends, we’re reminded how lucky he is. I celebrate this miracle and the person he’s become, and I wish in many ways that I was as full of life and energetic as he is. But I also dread every horrible reminder that this could all be snatched away at any time. And whenever there’s some setback–a mechanical issue with some diodes in one implant when he was two, or his second implant surgery when he was 10, for example—it all comes rushing back, forcing me to relive it again. My coping strategy, which boils down to forgetting the bad, always fails me eventually.

The miracle of this particular episode was that Mark had somehow guided the car to the side of the road without hitting anything. He doesn’t remember doing that, he just remembers waking up at the side of the road in an idling car and not knowing why. I guess that this might be stress-related. That his job, which forced him to drive a day later than he originally planned, may play some role. That this young man, who is healthier than all of us, muscular and strong, and never happier than when he’s busy doing something physical, will get past this. But I’m his dad. And I worry. I do nothing but worry.

Hearing that Mark was coming home for Mother’s Day, our daughter Kelly, who’s going to college in North Carolina and has her own issues to deal with, decided that she would do so as well after confirming that she could get the time off from work. This was, of course, fantastic. We had just seen the kids in February when they visited us in Mexico City, and we had a great trip, but I never get tired of being with them.

But this is Kelly, and Kelly doesn’t like to fly. And despite the drive being what I think is prohibitively long to even consider, something close to 8 hours one-way, she decided she’d drive. Kelly mostly talks to her mother when a one-on-one is required, and I respect that. But Stephanie made a point of not telling Kelly about my unhappiness with her driving, knowing it would upset her. And aside from worrying about Mark while that remote nightmare unfolded in slow motion, I tried to bite my tongue and not raise the issue with Kelly as well over the weekend.

I almost made it. We were driving to dinner on Sunday night, and she mentioned that the guy who had done her nails the day before—with Mark not coming, she and Stephanie had gone to a spa—had expressed surprise that she would make such a long drive by herself. Kelly has done this drive with a friend and with Stephanie at different times, which I very much prefer. But she’s also done it by herself. And, what the heck, she brought it up.

“Honestly, I have some concerns about this myself,” I said, as diplomatically as possible, and as if I hadn’t been semi-obsessing over it for days. But she simply said that she liked to drive, and that these long drives were calming, a nice break from her normal schedule. This experience is, in other words, the opposite of what a long drive is like for me these days. And it was a reminder that, I too, used to like long drives when I was younger. And that maybe I could have understood this and even anticipated it.

So this morning, when she got up to get leave as early as possible and get home by mid-afternoon, we stood there in the doorway, hugging, and saying goodbye, with the weekend having passed without me losing my mind because she couldn’t just get on a plane like a normal person and fly here in 90 minutes. As she drove off, she lowered her window and waved back at us, as both our kids do now when they leave. And we waved back, each silently confronting that fear that only parents know yet again, together but alone in our thoughts.

It’s the worst.

I called my mother on Mother’s Day, of course, and made plans to come visit her when we’re in the area in early June. These calls are usually awkward and one-sided. She never has anything to say about her own life, but she asks about the kids, and Steph and me. And she asks about Sharon, the not-stepmother whose home we’re currently living in, because she’s not doing well, and everyone loves Sharon, and life isn’t fair.

I didn’t tell her about Mark because I didn’t want her to worry and ruin the day, especially when we knew so little. But I did at least mention to her that she was right about the terribleness of being a parent, that I celebrate their victories, of course, but also feel their pain more than I’d like or maybe should. In this one way, we get each other, are the same. She seemed to appreciate this. Though I suspect we both wish, in our own ways, that it were better.

Oh, and as I hit “Publish” on this, my phone chimed. It was Kelly, she just made it back to North Carolina. That’s good, at least.