A Mother's Paranoia

Sound carries in an 'open concept' home. There are very few walls dividing each space in this type of home, which I personally love due to slight issues of claustrophobia. However when two people are having a conversation in the kitchen, and someone is watching TV in the family room, a multitude of sounds bumping into each other like a crowd of drunk people in a bar can be very irritating.

Yet it can also be very important too.

My parents' house has a concept such as this. The kitchen, which is open to the living room is on the left side of the house while the family room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom are lined up in a row on the right side. A long hallway indented with a large two-door linen closet, runs up the middle of the house dividing each side. This is where my parents keep their grandchildren's toys, which become strewn across every piece of flooring space when my kids go to visit. Both my kids love this hallway. My four-year-old son likes to run up and down it, thinking he's "Dash" from the movie "The Incredibles". My sixteen-month-old daughter runs too; I think mainly to beat the reputation that baby girls are much 'calmer and more stationary' then baby boys.

The adults are usually scattered throughout the house. My mother and I often chat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, while my Dad and my husband stretch out on the recliners in the family room and watch some crappy western movie. My grandparents, who live in the basement apartment, are often upstairs and visiting with us too (my 85-year-old grandfather still gets on the floor and plays with my kids). Of course this is the time when the bumping of sounds can be most hectic.

But I think of a time when all the adults are sitting in the family room visiting but still keeping and eye and an ear out for my kids. My son is a 'fairly' good listener and usually stays out of things that he's not supposed to touch. My daughter is very explorative but can't quite reach just yet so I don't have to worry too much.

Except when I realize she can now open a drawer.

And it hits me a second later that we are not at my house. My knives are in a block at the back of my counter.

Not in a drawer.

It takes two seconds to drop my tea on the family room carpet and run down that long hallway to the doorway to the kitchen. As I'm running, I can hear the slide of the drawer pulling out, followed by a 'click' once it's completely out from the cabinet. As I'm running, I can hear the clinking of items in the drawer while little hands and little fingers try their hardest to get a hold of one of those items.

It happens so fast. But I'm not fast enough.

Or am I?

Just before I turn the corner to face an unimaginable horror, I wake up in a sweat at 3:48 this morning. I look over at my husband who is snoring peacefully, and then I lay there and stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. I play the dream over and over in my head.

Why did I have to dream something so terrible?

How can I even think to imagine something like this?

It's 5:12 am and I decided there was only one thing I could do about this right now. I roll over, kiss my husband on the forehead, get up and close our bedroom door. I walk across a short hall to my son's room, kiss him on the cheek, pull the covers over him that he's kicked off in the night and put his "puppy" under his arm that had found it's way to the floor. I tip-toe very quietly to my daughter's room (a very light sleeper and typically not a morning person), stand over her bed and just watch her. She's laying on her stomach with her legs curled up underneath her, holding on to a corner of her blanket with one hand.

She is the perfect picture of beauty and serenity.

I very carefully kiss her on the top of her head. Her curly mass of 'bedhead' tickles my nose and makes me smile for the first time this morning. She stirs a little and I freeze thinking I'm going to have to be super-quick at making a bottle if she wakes up! She sighs and turns her face away from me as if to let me know I've bothered her. I smile again and tiptoe out of her room and close the door.

So what's the one thing I had to do? I've listed a few things so far haven't I?

I had to share it with you.

Some people near and dear to me are likely thinking "My God. Why did she write something like this?"

A mother's paranoia is very real.

When my son was barely a year old, I dreamt that he fell over Niagara Falls. It was so real to me that I cried off and on for two days. I was afraid to share this with anyone because I thought I was crazy and I felt embarrassed. When I finally told my mother about it, she told me that she still has paranoid dreams about me (and I'm thirty-something).

A mother's paranoia is there to tell us something.

In this case, I'm going to keep an even closer eye on my kids. Maybe my dream tells me I'm slacking.

Maybe not.

But I'll bet when my mother reads this she's going to somehow lock that drawer!