911

Today at the gym an alarm sounded. My heart dropped. My head throbbed. All I could think about were my babies in the kids’ club. Could it be a gunman? A natural disaster? Fortunately everything in there was fine…this time.

A rainstorm used to be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon cuddled up watching movies. Now I find myself worried about every sound of thunder that this may turn into flash floods or a tsunami. Every other day, it seems like, there is some news story reporting on something miserable happening in Southern China or something like that. We saw such disaster in New Orleans and the east coast. What about here?

I have blogged enough about the concerns of gunmen and bombers to last a lifetime. Perhaps some of you are thinking I need shock therapy so that I can get over these things and just live my life. And I have…more or less gotten over these fears, not shock therapy. But there are times, like this morning, these feelings, that I work very hard to compartmentalize into a (giant) proverbial box in my closet, come rushing out.

How much concern is appropriate awareness and how much is overwhelming irrational fears? And how do you prepare your children for the fears of the real world when the fears are so very scary?

At the end of camp Drew will be spending a week in our local “safety town.” There he will learn about stranger danger, fire safety, road rules, etc. I’m happy that trained professionals will help him through the basics. But so many more complex questions and scenarios fall to me. How do you educate your young one without completely petrifying them, like I am at times?

I gave life to three of the most amazing (yet, superbly challenging) human beings to ever grace the planet. In a world that sometimes resembles a sci-fi thriller, how do I help them to be prepared? How do I help them to understand how scary this world is without debilitating them? And how do I learn to live our lives like it’s our last without constantly worrying that it is in fact our last?