It was the year 1999 and everyone thought the world was going to fall apart. People had been hired for tech companies for the express purpose of saving the world from what I think was a hilarious mis-step of computer geeks decades before. There was talk of alien invasions and all sorts of crazy biblical prophecies. At the very least we thought that someone could use all of the hype to do some crazy terrorist stunt.
Where was I? Packing my bags to head out on a flight to Israel. I can't imagine why this would have caused my mother to have heart palpitations. I mean, not to be obvious, but going to Israel on a good day is a little bit tricky. If you asked me why I would possibly want to go to Israel on New Years Day of 2000, I would have told you first "Because it's a free trip, duh." and then I would have said something on the border of snarky and beyond-my-years-wise like "If I was meant to die, so be it. It's fate and I must live my life in full without fear."
13 Years later and I find that I reach a high level of anxiety just traveling across the state to go to a Children's Museum with my kids. What has changed? On my trip to Israel we drove in Jeeps through knee deep mud with land mines on both sides of the road. We passed by bombed out buildings and stayed to chat in villages that had dealt with numerous hostage situations. I wasn't afraid. I was soaking it all in while meanwhile my mother at home was probably curled up with her head under the covers repeating, "She's almost a grown up, she's almost a grown up, she needs to make her own decisions, she needs to make her own decisions,..." This is pure speculation of course, I can neither confirm nor deny that my mom was scared to death while I was gone, I'm just assuming. Because if Liam or Joshua ever decided to leave the country- let alone to leave the country at a particularly precarious moment in history to a particularly volatile region of the world almost literally on the other side of the planet... if they ever decided to do that, I would be scared to death- but I would let them go.
Where was I? Yes, current high levels of anxiety. And I've thought about this a lot lately as the build up to 2012 started to mount, say 2 years ago. It started with the history channel featuring the ancient Mayan civilization- back when they actually used to have shows based on history on the history channel. It started with shows that totally downplayed hysteria like "How The World Could End!" (Note my snarky yet wise tone. I haven't changed much). At first I watched them like the 21 year old I used to be with a note of acceptance that we must live our lives and accept what will be. But then I looked over at the bouncy seat and saw a baby who hadn't yet gotten to live his life. Suddenly I felt, quite selfishly, that I hadn't gotten enough time with him and that two years more just wouldn't be enough. And then I projected a bit (and by this I mean, I thought ahead. I realize the way I wrote it, it makes it sound like I threw up a little bit), I projected an image of my baby at the age of 3 1/2 with his short little legs trying to keep up as I ran away from the end of the world and I just didn't think he would be able to run that fast and I thought, "Well, I have two years to start weight lifting to get ready to be able to carry him!" And this was all quite a lot to take in. It got to the point that I had to leave the room when the history channel was on. I would peek back in at the end just to watch the 3 minutes which disproved the episode, or brought up reasonable questions. But always I would fail to leave before the last line, "The Mayan calendar may not predict the end of the world... or perhaps it does. Only on December 12th of 2012 will we know the truth." Or something menacing like that.
For awhile I kept my anxiety to myself, but it became too much to hold in and eventually I started asking around. Other moms got that same fiery looks in their eyes and I could tell we were all holding back at least a little bit of fear. None of us had a plan, we just knew we wanted to survive whatever might happen in 2012. Well actually, one mom friend said something quite unexpected, but it did make me think... she said she would lie down and hope that the end would be quick for her and her daughter. Ugh. That made it all seem so real. My friend was going to die? And meanwhile I would be running with a 30 pound kid?
Here is a reproduction of a texting conversation I had with my sister who is also a mother about a year ago.
Lori: Oh my god, I'm watching a show about Nostradamus.
Me: I know, it's freaky :(
Lori: I should really turn this off.
Me: Turn it off!!!
Lori: What are we going to do?
Me: It's nothing, plenty of what he said was proven wrong already.
Lori: Like what?
Me: Don't know.
Me: I looked it up on google. Lots of stuff.
Lori: That makes me feel better.
Lori: I should turn this off.
Me: Turn it off!!!
Me: Well now you have to watch the end where they disprove it.
Lori: Ok.
Lori: That was depressing.
Me: You should have turned it off.
Lori: (crying can't be communicated via text) we need to live each day to the fullest.
Me: Goodnight.
I looked for the texting conversation but couldn't find it. I even plugged in an old phone. It was like "Frankenphone" but I think maybe the texting conversation happened sometime between my current phone and that phone I just plugged in and really with cell phones, who can keep track. So anyway, that's not an exact quote but it's a "gist" of our text-versation.
So why was 2012 so frightening even though we are rational human beings who knew full well that if they Mayans were so good at predicting things, wouldn't they have prevented their own demise? Possibly it scares us out of our wits for the same reason that we all got so scared when we heard about the shooting in Newtown, CT. Even though I'm a teacher and know that kids are safe in school and even though I tell my students that anytime they ask; just like every other mother in America, I pictured my own first grader hiding in a bathroom with his teacher. Stories about flooding and kids being pulled away from their mothers make us cry without warning on a Tuesday morning before work. Nightmare scenarios flash before our eyes on a regular basis and we have to smile just to ward off the demons.
You know what they always say about bears... don't get between a mother and her cub. We have that protective instinct too. Without the claws true, but we can never be too complacent. We always need to be ready to protect our kids. And the worst fear that any of us as mothers has is... someday we might fail at our job. It might be because they can't run so fast with their short little legs, it might be because there's only so much you can do when it's the end of the world, or because they're simply not with you when they need you most because they're halfway around the world. I didn't know if I'd be able to write this blog post about my greatest fear in 2012. I thought maybe my fears would be founded. Mostly I knew for sure that it was all hype so we continued to live our lives just fine. We have an emergency kit and an idea of what we might do if something extreme were to take place... but mostly we just kept on going as normal. And as the days got closer and closer, it seemed like there were fewer specials on the History channel (they had at this point moved on to quality programming like Pawn Stars and American Restoration- no really, I watch them both!). By the time December 2012 came around, I figured it was just time to get a new calendar (figuratively of course, because I have a Motorola Smartphone). I figured that it really all had been just hype. I filled my car up with a tank of gas and went to work as usual and soon enough it became a great big joke for everyone.
Secretly though, me and millions of other moms (possibly even you) let out a sigh of relief. Happy to live another day, another day for us to worry about the future of our children.
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