When do parents get to stop worrying

A reader urged me to pass this e-mail on. The author is unknown.

Is there a cutoff period when offspring become accountable for their actions? Is there a moment when parents can become detached spectators in the lives of their children and shrug, “It’s their life,” and feel nothing?

When I was in twenty, I stood in a hospital corridor waiting for a stitch in my son’s head. I asked, “When do you stop worrying?” The nurse said, “When they get out of the accident stage.” My mother smiled faintly and said nothing.

When I was thirty, I sat on a little chair in a classroom and heard how my child talked incessantly, was disruptive, and headed for a career making license plates. The teacher said, “Don’t worry, this is just a stage. My mother smiled faintly and said nothing.

When I was forty, I spent a lifetime waiting for the car to come home, and the front door to open. A friend said, “In a few years you can stop worrying. They’ll be adults.” My mother smiled faintly and said nothing.

By the time I was 50, I was tired of being vulnerable. I still worried over my children, but now there was nothing I could do about it. My mother smiled faintly and said nothing.

I continued to anguish over their failures, be tormented by their frustrations and absorbed in their disappointments. My friends said that when my kids got married I could stop worrying. I wanted to believe that, but I was haunted by my mother’s wan smile.

Can it be the parents are sentenced to a lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of human frailties and the fears of the unknown? Is concern a curse-or is it a virtue that elevates us to the highest form of life?

One of my children became irritable recently, saying to me, “Where were you? I’ve been calling for 3 days, and no one answered. I was worried.”

I smiled a wan smile. The torch has been passed.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 2002