I know that some of you are wondering. . . How on earth could she let that daughter go off by herself to build homes for the poor of Guatemala? What kind of care-free mother is she???? Doesn't she worry about her daughter at all???
Well, my friends, it's like this. . .
Years ago I was what you might call a worry wart. I worried about where my children went. . . how they got there. . . what they ate. . . who they were with . . . car accidents . . . near drownings. . . bicycle topplings . . .you name it, I worried about it. . . until . . .
. . . until I sent my oldest for a semester in Florence.
And let me tell you, sending a child for a semester abroad is the Compound W of Motherhood; curing you of any worry warts you may have acquired in your collective years of parenting.
Let me set the stage for you. . .
Daughter Number One has left for Florence on a Saturday, and despite her promises to call when she arrives, the next time we hear from her is Tuesday night. (Thanks to the wonders of on-line flight information, we know that - at the very least - her flights have landed safely.) Now this particular call arrives at our home at about 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, which makes it somewhere around 3:00 a.m. in Rome - and the streets of downtown Rome are where she’s calling from. My husband can barely hear her . . . what with all the sirens wailing in the background. . .
Dad! Is that you????
What???
Whoops!!!
I have to go now.
I’ll call you right back. I promise!!
. . . Click. . .
I tried desperately to redial the number she called us from. No luck.
So tell me. . . What would you do in a situation like this????
I tell you what I did . . . . I went to bed and slept like a baby for the first time in weeks!
Sometimes, my friends, you just have to accept the fact that there is nothing on God's good earth you can do that will change the outcome of a situation.
And that, loyal readers, is the night I learned to let go.
It's like that old saying. . .
God, grant me the eyesight to see my daughters' strengths,
the blindfold to ignore her outfits,
and the wisdom to know the difference!
p.s. Months later my daughter let us know that real story behind that phone call. . . turns out she had imbibed a wee bit of that fine Italian wine (okay, she was drunk as a skunk) and hit the wrong button on that new cell phone of hers. . . you know, the one that she had programmed our home number into, but never intended to call!!!!
