Furiously beating hearts

My youngest is an ardent practitioner of attachment childing. He wants me to "come be my friend"  beside him in the bed while he falls asleep, and I am usually happy to comply. As a working parent I cherish these nighttime moments and the sweet, informative conversations that bubble up out of children trying to procrastinate sleep.

Mid-day queries to my oldest of "How was your day?" are typically answered with a curt "nuffink" as though he were a British hooligan trying to avoid interrogation with conversationally-incorrect answers. Bedtime discussions of the same question, however, yield all kinds of enthusiastic answers, usually now about whales and sharks much as it used to be about dinosaurs and trains, but also about his friends and what books he likes to read at school and what he does during "circle time."

My youngest likes these conversations too but goes far beyond requiring that I simply exclaim interest in his stories. He demands that we be utterly entwined in sleep, with arms linked together and one of his small fists buried deep in my hair, either to prevent me from extricating myself once he's out or simply because there's nothing more comforting when you're small in this monster-filled, dark world than clinging to your mother.

Tonight he sleepily placed my hand on his chest, and I felt the jolt of being reminded once again that even medicated, my anxiety is only partially controlled. His heartbeat felt so fast, so near to the surface, vulnerable and delicate. It made me feel panicky, that furiously beating heart, and I was swallowed up in my overwhelming need to protect these wonderful boys...and the crushing impossibility of my perfectly doing so.

++++

Yesterday we fell asleep together on the couch for an afternoon nap and I was awoken abruptly to the sound of my sweet, mischievous little boy crying hysterically at my elbow and the jangling ring of my phone, a neighbor calling to make sure he hadn't overstepped his bounds by letting my son into the house when he seemed to be stuck outside.

My youngest has, apparently, mastered the art of unlocking and opening doors and had decided he wanted to play outside while Mom slept, only to be frightened by seeing a bee and even more frightened by the realization that he couldn't get back into the house.

With the incoherence of interrupted sleep my mind tried to process everything that might have happened if my luck had been different. We take every precaution we think of, but we're still ultimately powerless. It's a terrifying thought.

++++

I had to pull my hand back from his rib cage and stop thinking about that insistent heartbeat. I tried to snuggle while also letting my thoughts drift in a different direction. Instead my mind drifted, inevitably, to construction.

I panic sometimes when I see buildings under construction. They look so... precarious with all of their innards exposed. I can't imagine that the concrete won't fall off (Big Dig) or that the floors won't pancake (Loma Prieta). I have to convince myself it is just that specific office building that looks that way, not my own, and then promise myself I'll never go into that one.

I think about cabinets falling off walls--they weigh so much even empty and seem so tenuously connected to the studs, which I expect to buckle themselves under the weight of so many hanging things and the structural weaknesses of tunnels made by drills and screws over the last 60 years.

I think about the weight of our bookcases splitting our house in two.

I think about...

It's endless, these many cripplingly uncontrollable things.

I put my hand back on my son's chest. I pray these boys don't end up like their mother