Despite all my experience as a mom, I have a grave weakness, one my husband loves to tease me mercilessly about: I cannot handle crying. Projectile vomit, open wounds, academic difficulties, social problems, questions about the meaning of life—all of these I handle with a deft touch and pervasive calm. But put a crying baby anywhere in the vicinity and I am unnerved; if it happens to be my baby, I am reduced to a spineless mound of panic.

I’ve given a lot of thought—well, not a lot, but enough – as to why I cannot tolerate crying. I like to joke that I have post-traumatic disorder from Neve’s infancy, when her incessant crying went on for, oh, give or take an hour, 11 months. I was absolutely helpless to soothe her then, since her misery was entirely medical, but that didn’t stop me from walking a trough into the floor with effort. I kept thinking, if I just keep at it, trying different things, I’ll hit upon the one thing that makes her happy. I will find the one thing that makes her happy.

Anybody else hear the hollow desperation in that idea? Granted, she was an infant, and without resources, but still, I saw it as my job alone to make her happy. Since she howled  regardless of who was holding her, where did I get the notion that I had to be the source of comfort in her life? What I should have been doing was finding someone else to walk her up and down the floor while I sat in the garage for an hour with a book and some headphones. But I didn’t, my ego wanted center stage, I wanted to be the one to fix her. That and a hefty dose of completely irrational guilt: aren’t mothers supposed to sacrifice everything for their children? And so, I walked and soothed and walked and soothed myself into utter resentment, because in the end, I was Neve’s human pacifier. For the next 5 years, I had to de-program her from clinging to me.

So when Colin cries now, something primal in me surges up. I am simultaneously compelled to make it all better while also adamant that I not become his only source of comfort. The battle of these elements within me is what makes me seize up when the wailing begins. Guilt, ego, pride – forget potty training and lack of sleep, these are the real challenges of parenthood.

On any given day, I am shifting between so many different levels of development, I feel like I’m on some bizarre game show, where I spin the wheel and have to mentally adjust to whatever age level I’ve landed on.

Within the space of a few hours I swing from reading “Hop on Pop” to a college student’s surreal drug trip. After helping Dex solve for X, I am back to evaluating metaphors and identifying misplaced modifiers in a twenty-year old’s essay about his mother’s suicide attempts. From a report on Egyptian queen Hatshepsut to an analysis of small-town politics, from Dr. Seuss to an explicit memoir of rape, I swing to the furthest corners of my adaptability.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the dissonance tonight of composing an email to an alcoholic senior while simultaneously rocking the baby to sleep. As I type, I shuttle between concern for this young man and my responsibility towards him — and forming strategies about how to prevent my kids from ending up like this. Because, you know, these students of mine are so talented, so wonderful, they come from loving homes like yours and mine – and they are trudging around on a treadmill of pain. How do such gifted kids end up like this? I grab at what snippets of data I can, but is impossible to draw conclusions: their stories and struggles are as individual as their thumbprints.

As the baby sighs on my shoulder, all I can think is how many events conspire to transform a perfectly whole infant into a bitter and self-loathing voice typing away on another computer. Elsewhere in the house my son, a boy on the verge of adolescence struggles with his algebra, and I can almost hear his silent plea for rescue. I wonder how many silent pleas this young man has sent over the years, hoping someone might hear.

I get up and go looking for my son.

I come from a long line of worriers, women who prided themselves on being able to see all possible tragic outcomes from any given situation. Go ahead and laugh, but you know when you are in the presence of a majestic worrier: it is a talent that requires vivid imagination, massive quantities of guilt and a deft recollection of the worst of human nature. These are skills developed and honed by a fondness for storytelling and acute attention to the morning news.
I have often felt as if I am primed to carry on this legacy, but it is a role I resist to the very core of my being. Being around kids of all ages all day helps me remain grounded in the here and now, but lately, it has been Colin who has wrenched me back from the edge of worry smack into being present.
Every night, after his bath, I plonk Colin down on the rug and watch as his round baby body waddles around the room, exploring. It doesn’t matter that he explored this same room not an hour earlier, it is all new for him again. He delights in his squishy blocks, laughs at the cat, pats his naked belly. He squeals as he crosses the room to tackle me, his laughter so infectious, he draws Dex and Neve from their homework to watch. Before long, all of us are on the floor tickling him and laughing and tossing stuffed animals at each other. There is no room for anything but pure joy.
One night, Tom came home in the middle of this scene and lay right down among us in his coat. Colin chuckled and launched himself at Tom, thrilled he had a new body to climb.
Tom and I looked at each other, and I said, “Everyone’s day should end like this.”
“Doesn’t get much better, “ he agreed.

Someday, my time will be my own again, to design and fill as I wish — maybe with fret and worry, but I hope not. For now, I have a squealing wet baby to keep me laughing, and I’m confident the image of such joy will linger more powerfully in my memory than any anxiety.

I’ve already been up for thirteen hours, why can’t this kid sleep normally, is this a cold or asthma? Oh, god, he’s coughing again, is this rage or fever? Why does Neve have to be so dependent on me, why is it my job to feed this clan all the time, where the hell is my husband?

These were my thoughts last night as I sat at the kitchen table, nebulizer mask strapped on the crying baby while Neve nagged me for homework help and Dex kept making vague suggestions that dinner might be a good idea.

It isn’t often that I slide into that negative roll of thoughts, but by six o’clock but last night, I had nothing left, no restraint, no patience, certainly no ability to problem solve. After three weeks of the flu and various broken cogs in the machinery of our life, I was a memory of myself. There’s got to be a better way, there’s got to be a better way, ran on a monotonous loop through my brain.

It is a mantra I know well, and the re-emergence of it let me know I was in trouble. The last time I thought like that, I was very close to cracking up completely.

Neve was born with a problem with her esophagus that made her entire infancy a crisis. Constant worry about the possibility of her choking added to the ten daily hours of crying and year of extreme sleep deprivation made Tom a zombie and me a time-bomb. I couldn’t focus on anything other than getting through the day. We were barely functioning as a family, even with my mother’s daily grocery and laundry deliveries. When I think about the fact that I actually drove a car and was responsible for an infant and a toddler at that time, I wince. I often woke up in the midst of some task that involved heavy machinery or sharp objects. Tom would find scissors in the refrigerator and glasses in the dryer. Once he came home to find three-year old Dex pacing the sidewalk in front of the house, all the doors open, and Neve and I asleep on the hallway floor. My only comfort was during our many trips to Children’s Hospital when I could put my situation in perspective amongst all the suffering, sleep-deprived and worried parents that lurk those cheerfully painted hallways.

I had nothing left by the end of that year, and it took a solid four years to build myself back up to feeling sane and strong again.

So why, last night, was I sliding so quickly to that place of panic? The issues were minor, the conflicts all temporary. What was making me so desperate? 

A baby coughs, and the parental post-traumatic stress kicks in.

This is what I have noticed about having a baby around again: it doesn’t take long for the disaster film in my brain to start rolling. Once you know had bad it really can get with an ill baby, then you know anything is possible, and this knowledge is a burden. You know how quickly things slide from neutral to the red zone, how quickly they stop breathing, how slow that ambulance ride feels.

Above all, you know you are not exempt from anything. And that is a terrifying thought, even in a warm family kitchen, on a cold winter night.

The other day, Dex said to me, “I feel so apart from the culture.”After taking a moment to silently appreciate this sixth grade insight, I responded, “Well, it’s not such a great culture right now, bud.” I continued to unload the groceries from the car onto the steps. 

“Seriously, Mom,” he said as he hoisted plastic bags over his shoulders. “I feel like I live in a totally different world from my peers.”

“Like how?” I unbuckled the baby from his carseat and let him loose in the driveway, where he toddled, screeching to the birds.

“Like they all have cell phones and Wii’s and they’ve all seen The Simpsons movie and Spiderman—

“Hey, you didn’t want to see Spiderman—“

“I know, I know, but you know what I mean. Half the time I have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“So everybody only talks about tv and movies and video games?”

“Mostly.” We stood silently and watched Colin hollering gleefully as the wind brushed back his hair.

“Look at him,” I smiled.

“Yeah, nature boy,” Dex added. 

We fell silent again and then I said, “Well, you know, I feel I’m outside of things sometimes too. Almost everything I like doing doesn’t require technology.”

“I know.”

“It’s just who I am. Sometimes I have no idea what everyone is talking about, especially my students. But my real friends and I? The things we talk about hardly ever have to do with popular culture.”

Dex swung the grocery bags a bit. “Even Harry has the Simpsons movie on his ipod.”

I sighed and looked at him. “Dex, I know how hard it is to be my kid.”

“It’s not hard, Mom-

“Let me finish.” I leaned back against the car. “It’s like junk food—you have to have eaten a healthy diet in order to handle the occasional junk. Your emotions and your brain are like that too, I think. I believe you have to have a real sense of who you are and what you can handle before you bite into the stuff that’s offered as entertainment these days. Do you trust me on that?”

“Yes.” He jumped to corral Colin away from the downspout. “That’s the thing. I do think you’re right on some of this stuff.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. But then the implication hit me. “But not all of it.”

“Right.”

I smiled. “You’re gonna be okay, kid, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he said, coming back towards me. “I will.”

Dear Readers: I’d love to hear your take on your kids and media. Are you more laissez-faire, or do you monitor your kids’ media diet? Do you have a philosophy about what you allow them to consume or do you let them lead? Is is a struggle or do you kids accept your standards? Is it a senseless generational worry, or a real concern? Please post any comments you have below. Thanks in advance for your replies!

-Andi