Instead of a 12-hour-overnight schedule on the weekends, my daughter’s schedule has changed to 9 hours in the afternoon/evening on the weekends, and a couple weekday evenings (off at 11) during the week. The off at 11 part rarely happens, and I worry about her until I see on her Facebook page that she’s on the way home. It doesn’t matter if it is 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. I will be awake until I know she’s at home safe with her family. That is probably why so many Facebook pages have things on them like “I’m at work now. I’m on my way home now.” It isn’t because their friends have to know their locations every single minute of the day. Nope. It is for the mothers.
My son’s job is waaaaay worse. He works 150 feet in the air, 12 to 16-hour shifts, 7 days a week until the job is done. I try not to think about that at all. He never tells me where he is or what he is doing on the grounds that I worry too much. How can a mother, who watched those first tentative baby steps, read books at night, shooed away the monsters in the closet, fixed the boo boos of the physical sort (scraped knees) and later, tried to assuage the anguish of the broken hearts, not worry about their children even after they’re grown? “You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself! After all, I learned this stuff from you and dad!” he confidently assures me. “That’s DIFFERENT!” I want to scream. “Your daddy and I were adults!” But that would not be a good argument to use on somebody that has a daughter going into middle school.
It must have something to do with Mom genes. My mother still worries about me.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there worrying about their children (which is all of you). And for you new moms, the worrying NEVER ENDS.
A1A South 