Big Feet, Big Worries

December was a month of pitter pattering feet, some far larger than my own (which are nothing to sneeze at, size-wise). You know what they say -- big feet, big bunions. Tight shoes. Not braggin, just sayin.

My little post-divorce townhouse has returned to deafening quiet. The kids have all appeared and disappeared; their friends who, in my mind, are still not old enough to drive, have stopped trickling in and out. The imaginary noises in the middle of the night are louder now, especially after a few hours spent binge-dozing on creepy crime shows. The dog and I wake, startled, and stare at each other, wondering who will protect whom. The odds aren't good for either of us.

My children took me seriously when I encouraged them to leave the nest, which is kind of ironic since they rarely take anything I say seriously. They must have known I was joking.

I am relieved, sometimes, to think that two of them have gotten to the age at which the brain is fully developed, according to most "experts." The youngest has a few years to go, but gender is on her side, which helps a little but still keeps me from exhaling completely when she's home on break until I hear her footsteps on the stairs in the wee hours of the morning.

On one dicey night during that particularly dicey summer between high school and college, I read my son the riot act about never making me one of those moms who gets one of those phone calls that turns her life into something I cannot even wrap my head around. He promised me he wouldn't, but of course his brain wasn't fully formed yet, so I held my breath a lot that summer, and every summer after that, when he would come home. And for the three days last month when he was visiting.

Four moms and four dads got that phone call earlier this week, just a few suburbs away from where I lay in my own bed waiting for the pitter patter of feet so I could exhale. Eight parents who never expected when they waved goodbye to their sons and recited by rote the "have fun and be careful" script that has poured out of all of us thousands of times that their sons would only heed the first part. If our brains are really fully formed at 25, would any of us, at any age, ever be reckless enough to let our kids leave the house, much less the state, or the country?

As a parent of adult children who tend to think I'm a blithering idiot, even more so than I used to be, I smile when I think about how fragile and incompetent they think I am. No matter how big my feet are, they are certain that my brain is no longer fully formed, skeptical that it ever was. They have a point; if I had any sense at all, I would have handcuffed them to the house, just so I could breathe.
And breathing is important.

But it's back to pitter-patterless nights, except for the things, imaginary or real, that go bump and startle me and the dog awake, only to look at each other and wonder who will protect whom. And wonder, while we're at it, what the kids are doing, when their footsteps are too far away for us to hear.