Any day now

Back in Virginia I had an eighty five year old client with whom I were told to mind my ps and qs because he was from another, more conservative generation. True, I had to call him by his title name and try (very hard) not to cuss, but he was also one of the most open minded and smartest people I have ever met.

He would tell me about world war II and how he was riding his bike in his hometown London on D day, or how his girlfriend's house (and family) had been obliterated by a nazi bomb when they walked back from a date, or how 9/11 didn't impact him as much as it did me.

We talked about literature classics and art. He introduced me to Georgia O'keefee.

But we also talked about children because he had nine, and I didn't know if I wanted any.

His oldest child was 62 years old and his youngest was 26 at the time, when I asked him at which age his children had to reach before he stopped worrying about them. He sighed, "any day now."

The movie "Terms of Endearment" starts with Shirley MacLaine obsessively checking her daughter's crib to see if she is breathing. She ends up waking up the baby and making her cry.

This scene was funny to me because I imagined that only crazy, neurotic people would do that.

That is, until tonight, when I am hovering over his crib at three am, under his snoopy night light and trying to see from every angle whether his chest is rising and falling or not, and at what speed.

My mom whispers from behind me that I should get to bed, that baby will not die, that his breathing is fine, but I keep jumping off my too high of a bed, stitches shooting sharp pains and all to check on baby, until I can't resist it and poke him, waking him up, and everybody else in the house.

Watching from the video monitor in our room I can hear my husband sigh.

My sleepy mom returns and says I should save all my worrying for when he is actually sick, but it's too late in this mommy hood path to think of worrying in terms of an on and off switch. I tell mom she herself is up because she is worried about me. I tell her that any day now, one of us will be able to get a full night of sleep.