Borrowing Trouble

Seeing the picture should have eased my worries. And it did, partially. The fact is, I had no reason to worry in the first place, really; but that is what parents do. When Emma signed on for the Peace Corps five years ago, I knew she was a strong and courageous young woman already. I abandoned any thought of her being shy and retiring when she was about three years old and ran up to the counter at McDonalds to get more catsup for her eight-year-old brother’s French fries. But a village in the middle of Tanzania? Are you kidding me? Then came the photograph. She is standing under a baobab tree in the required, though unaccustomed, long colorful skirt demonstrating to a large circle of dark-skinned villagers how to put a condom on a wooden penis she asked a woodworker to make for her. (I pause at the thought of that request in a way that can only be described as pregnant.) She is instructing them in Swahili, while a translator repeats her words in their tribal dialect. If she can do that, I figured, she can take care of herself. What I was most worried about was that she was me. Of course she is not, or she wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Our children are not us. Sooner or later, they will make their way in the world as their own selves. We teach them what we can, and then we let them go, to continue the journey on their own paths. I spent some time with a friend recently. She was trying resolve the difference between worrying about her teenage daughter and being concerned. I think it is a valid difference. Worry is a negative force in which we attempt inside our heads to avoid real or imagined threats. Worry focuses on the problem. Concern, on the other hand, is worry turned positive; a focus on the solution that drives us to do what we can about a situation, and let go of just letting what we can't control eat away at us. We watch our children flounder and out of our love for them we are concerned. We may help them visualize their future, what they want, how they think they might get there. And then we let go. Worry holds that false sense of control in our gut where all it can do is destroy us.

I've never been much of a worrier. I do think it’s a hobby for some people, though. (An idea borrowed from a book I just read.) Maybe we worry when we are feeling in doubt of our capability for excellence, when we don't trust our ability to solve a problem and come out on the other side. Maybe we borrow trouble when we flat out don't want to do the work. Maybe it gives us something to think about when we don’t know what else to do. We are afraid, and worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around that fear. When we start listing all the ways a good idea could go bad, we rob ourselves of the energy to visualize it going well. When I lie in bed in the middle of the night hashing and rehashing a problem or an irritant, it gets under my eyelids and holds them open. When I am able to let the movie stop running in my head and focus on what I might do about it, I fall asleep. The furies that come to visit in the night are bored with solutions. Darned hard to remember that in the middle of the night.

My mother is the Queen of Borrowed Trouble. I think it is her hobby. I don't know why that is. I think she feels little in control of her living, so it gives her something to do. The fact is, though, she has taken control of her living in ways that are amazing to me. There has been no evidence, that I can see, that her worst case scenarios have ever come to pass. She had a difficult childhood, and she rose above it. She lived through my father's absence during the war; and through the Great Depression. Not easy times, none of them. But she came out on the other side. It could have gone differently, of course; and still she would have come out on the other side. Her three children's lives may not be what she thought they would be, but she is proud of who we are. She and my father loved each other for more than 50 years. She did everything she could to prolong my father's life when his heart began to fail him. She cared for him well. But she could not control his dying. He was in charge of their lives during their marriage--at least on the surface; one might have thought that she would fall apart without him. I suspect she thought that. But she has not. At 95, she has taken care of herself and her home for 16 years all by herself. And still she worries. She worries about her finances, her health, the septic tank, trees falling on the house, the house falling apart, the garden not blooming, why she can't get her brain around her new computer. And she will not be dissuaded from her worry. Even by overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And my mother has concern for the environment. Ah, and there is the difference. I never hear her verbalize worry about it. And why is that? Because she is doing what she can do for it. She joined the Sierra Club when my for-profit-forestry father hated the Sierra Club. She recycled before it was fashionable. She fought to save trees on the hill on which she lives, so that future generations would have wild places of beauty close to home. She is solution-oriented, rather than problem-focused when it comes to the environment.

Meanwhile, back in my garden. My roof leaked after the lovely rain of a week ago. I worried and I stewed. I was surely going to have to replace the roof. It would cost a fortune. Why is there not someone in my life to take care of this so I don't have to? Then I stopped, and I called someone. He came and patched it. I paid him, and that is that.

Overheard yesterday at the cafe by a man too loud, but nevertheless, bearing a message worth repeating: “This day, here, in the middle of August is a gift. It is just a gift.” And it is, more and more as the day goes on. A day as close as it gets in the NC Piedmont to an all day rain. Maybe better, rain and sun, rain and sun. The roses glisten; the bees, drunk on nectar, can’t motivate themselves to leave the cosmos. And Friday’s enormous orange moon will be full when evening falls. There can be no worries this day that can overshadow the gift. They must be let loose, if just for the day.

Worry is expenditure. If you put a penny in your pocket every time you seize a moment of joy, and give it back to the universe every time you worry about something, how many pennies are left in your pocket at the end of the week? Try it.

I am done with watering the garden. They are on their own. It happens every summer. With or without my watering or as much rain and I think there should be, the sun annuals are doing beautifully. The perennials flounder when it is dry and bounce back when it rains. The ones that aren't going to make it for the long haul succumb whether I water or not. They really don't need my help. My worry for them is worthless. I do clean out weeds yesterday, perhaps as pennance for being gone for two weeks. I fill the bird feeder and put a new block of suet in the hanger, empty since I went on vacation. I haven’t seen the birds for the week I have been home; they return almost immediately. I am glad to see them. Yesterday I observe a male cardinal beak-to-beak-feeding a baby. I am so lucky.

My eye catches a sparrow at the cafe yesterday, sitting motionless in the hedge. Eventually she starts looking around her, swiveling her head to observed goings on and preening her bosom. I have rarely seen a bird stay in one place for so many minutes. Was she a juvenile? Not yet knowing that she was supposed to keep moving in a constant search for food? I sit and watch her: she on her branch in the hedge, I in my chair under the red umbrella--neither of us worrying about the passage of time.

The stock market is a veritable roller coaster this week. Standard and Poors dropped the US credit rating; everything affects the market. On the way to my cafe this morning I hear an analyst on NPR say that it is human nature to start disastersizing in such a scenario. And yet, he said, if worst case scenarios tended to come to pass, we would have been eaten by saber tooth tigers a long time ago. He adjusts his own investments only when his life changes, not when the market or the world changes. Good advice I think. I don't worry about money in my future, either. What is the point? It will be what it will be. I do believe that if we don't make plans, plans will be made for us. I do look ahead. But I try not to sweat the details.

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength." Corrie Ten Boom

Postscript: Just as I finished this post, except for the pictures, the unthinkable happened. I spilled my java across the Mac's keyboard. Somehow I have seen it happening in my head in the past. Somehow I have not borrowed that trouble, lying awake at night picturing it. And now, here it is.

Worry begins to build a nest in my gut. I engage in half decent head talk. "I have a protection plan. I can't change what just happened. I will take it to the Apple Store's Genius Bar (they are the geniuses, not me!) when they open." I occupy myself for two hours, then pack the exterior backup that I finally stopped procrastinating getting one month ago, and am at the door when it opens. Now, 15 minutes to wait. Now they have Mac in the back. Five minutes. And now, bad news: it is toast, or java, in this case. And Apple Care doesn't cover Really Stupid Things. Goodish news: they will sell me a new computer for about half the retail price. (It's just money. They make it every day. And yesterday I even got some of it: an unexpected gift that exactly covers the unexpected expense.) Really good news: I have been thinking about taking my backup drive in to see if it's worked, I have no idea; but hadn't quite gotten around to it. I hold my breath while the Genius confirms that it's all there. I have only two things on it since I backed it up a week ago. A half dozen photos that that I have already retaken. And an important piece of revision writing. It would be lost, but I emailed it on Thursday to my summer writing instructor. It's in my email file. You make the plans that you can,  and then you let it go. And sometimes just flat out get lucky.