A Trail of What Ifs

It was the kind of nightmare that makes your whole body ache. If I had been seven, I would've grabbed my blankie and crawled into bed with my parents. Because I'm thirty, I curled into a ball and just lay there moaning and praying for God to take the image of the dream out of my head so I could go back to sleep.

It involved Finny and concrete. Enough said.

I actually tried to toss and turn noisily in the hopes that David would wake up and ask me what the matter was. I wanted to talk about it to get it out of my head and just hear, "Everything is all right. Finny is fine." I knew is wasn't fair to wake David up to terrorize him with my nightmare too, so I lay there cringing at the repeated sight of it until eventually I fell back asleep.

Then, another nightmare. This time David was driving upside down. He wasn't looking at the road and he nearly killed us. In the dream, we were on our way to church, the cause of it all.

After last week's church fiasco, we had decided to try a new church, one of the only Catholic churches which offers babysitting for babies Finny's age. While excited about the idea of sitting through Mass uninterrupted, I was simultaneously terrified by the idea of leaving Finny with complete strangers.

The whole way there I was clutching my sweater and holding back tears, all the while embarrassed that I was this emotional about dropping him off at church daycare. Many, many mothers do this everyday. But not me. Finny stays with me everyday. I'm the only one who knows exactly what he can handle and what he needs. Up until now, if we have left him with someone, it was one of his grandparents or my sister, who also know him quite well and aren't upset or insulted when I freakishly give them a tedious and detailed list of instructions and "What ifs..."

This time I couldn't do that. It really would be freakish if I dropped him off for an hour with a full owner's manual pinned to his back. I never want to be the mom who follows her son to college or drops off his forgotten lunch at the office, and yet, here I was, confronted with my fears of letting him go and my complete lack of trust in the world outside my home. My mind raced.

What if one of the volunteers has a history, one of those women who can't conceive and is looking for a baby to snatch? I've seen them on the Today Show. What if there are bobby pins on the floor and he puts one in his mouth? What if they don't understand that he can't walk on his own and take him for a walk outside and then let go...on the concrete?

As we walked into the church, David kindly tried to put me at ease by suggesting, "I guess he could get Swine Flu in here."

"I know!" I exclaimed. What if, what if, what if?! I was dragging a trail of them behind me as I approached the glass doors.

But I did it. I let him go. We walked into the babysitting room and left him with Sue and Kristen, an adult and a teenager. He saw a plastic slide and immediately lunged for it. We signed him in, gave him a nametag, and I sheepishly muttered, "I'll just leave his bag here. There's a snack inside if he wants it, and here's his juice, and if he gets fussy, there's a pacifier in here, we've never left him before, and well, I guess we'll just go."

We left and we heard every word of Mass and sang every song and we stayed until the end without ever leaving our seats. It wasn't our church. It was much bigger and felt foreign, but maybe it's time we ventured out a bit into the foreign. The message, which we both got to hear, was about tribulation. No matter how big or small our tribulations are, God is there with us. And I guess that's exactly what I needed to hear.

When Mass ended, we raced down the hall to see how Finny had done. He didn't even notice we'd left.

No concrete, no baby snatchers. There was a runny nose in there, but I can't wipe every nose Finny comes into contact with. Instead I need to start getting more of my courage from God and less of my news from The Today Show, and then, maybe I'll be less inclined to burst into tears when I leave my family room. Then, maybe then, I can start to breathe a little easier, sleep a little sounder, and travel a little lighter without a trail of "what ifs" following me into every foreign situation I encounter.

Finny and concrete will have to co-exist after all, and I too will have to learn to self-soothe and put myself back to sleep at night.