Adorable Chaos

Playing in the surf, Newport, RI

I’m sitting here in a comfy beach chair watching my girls play in the surf on their boogie boards. They’re having a blast. Why can’t I stop worrying and simply enjoy this beautiful afternoon?

If I lose sight of one of them, for even a minute, my heart starts to pound a little harder. Is this normal? Well, for me it is. I worry. Constantly.

You are not supposed to spend your life worrying about your kids.

What? Really? I need to hear that again. Maybe 10 or 15 times every day until I get it.

You are not supposed to spend your life worrying about your kids.

I know that worry gets me no where. It’s a tremendous waste of time. Yet, it is so familiar to me when it shows up on my doorstep that I would be worrying if it was late.

Is worrying about my kids a twisted way of caring more for them? If we worry more, think more, analyse their every move more thoroughly, read every parenting book we can get our nervous little hands on, will it make us better moms?

I don’t think so.

I think it often makes us worse. It makes us feel inadequate. It makes us less likely to follow our children’s lead regarding what they need. They have a way of telling us what they need. If we can stop worrying long enough to listen to what they are saying, we will hear them. They don’t need us to stifle their sense of adventure by pointing out every danger in existence. That will only lead them to become worried children.

I’m attempting to distract myself by writing this. I’m distracting myself from the fact that it is perfectly sunny today (did I put enough sunblock on them?) and the sun is so bright that my husband keeps bringing his hand to shield his eyes so he can locate one of the girls in the waves (oh no, did his lose sight of one?).

Hiding behind the beach chair...

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter walked up to the water’s edge and was promptly knocked on her tush. She yelled “NO OCEAN!” several times and  has decided to play in the sand behind my comfy chair so she doesn’t have to look at the threatening water.  This now makes it difficult to keep an eye on her and her two sisters in the water without throwing my back out fro twisting every 30 seconds.

Could I be passing on my worry to her? Common, you know the answer to that!

“They will be okay,” I tell myself. Then I tell myself again.

I can hear my 5-year-old’s infectious laughter over the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, and it’s a beautiful sound. I can see the delight in my 9-year-old’s face as she rides the larger waves, a little further out.  My little one is playing in the sand behind my chair, meticulously burying every last shoe that came to the beach with us deep in the sand.

I’m going to take a deep breath now. I’m going to put down my pen and paper. I’m going to play in the sand with my girl. And I’m not going to worry.

For a least 5 minutes.

There are always moments in life we would like to hold on to. Today my 5-year-old came bouncing off the school bus and jumped into my arms. She told me how much she missed me and how happy she was to be home. Then she skipped away from me, down the driveway towards our house.

I want to hold on to that picture of her skipping down the driveway.

I want her to be able to remember that feeling she had at that moment, when life was so good that she felt like skipping and laughing, without a care in the world.

As I get older, it becomes more difficult for me to get in touch with that little girl of the past. The one who could lie back on a swing and stare at the clouds endlessly. Now that makes me kind of sick (really) and seems like a waste of time, but my little girl helps me. She brings back those feelings, even just for a moment, of what carefree living is all about.

And I want to remember it.