Over this past summer, I had a job as a nanny. One day, the eight-year-old girl went to ride bikes around the block with a friend. I decided I’d watch from the couch where I could see them come around one certain place nearly every four minutes. I felt comfortable knowing where she was at all times, until one trip around, for whatever reason, took nearly six minutes. I panicked, thinking something must have happened, that I wasn’t paying good enough attention. This little girl I had known for only a couple of months nearly gave me a heart attack when I didn’t know her exact whereabouts for about two minutes.
You are the child of a woman who doesn’t know where you are 90% of the time. As college students, we are in class or out with friends or hammered wandering the streets of downtown trying to find our way to Taco Bell. We are so wrapped up in our own freedom that sometimes we forget that we have a mother who, in the back of her mind, is always wondering what we’re doing, where we are, if we are safe. You have a mother who is terrified that this trip around the block is lasting too long.
Your mother raised you from the ground up. For the first nearly 16 years, she had her eye on you for most of the time. Once you could drive, sure, she worried, but you probably had to text her when you got there, when you left, what you were doing, who you were with and when you were going to be home. You were taking repeated four-minute laps around the block, and she was on the couch watching you, seeking comfort in knowing where you were for most of the time.
But your college years are those two minutes of panic, except extended out for four years. And while most of the time you’re not a careless, incomprehensible drunken fool, your mother probably thinks that you are every single night… (If she doesn’t assume you’re dead in a ditch somewhere). She is doing her level best to be okay with you being off on your own, having fun and making your own rules, but don’t let that trick you into believing she isn’t constantly worried about you.
Text your mom every night before you go to bed that you love her, or every morning to quell her anxieties. Make an effort to make her feel like she’s still one of the most important parts of your life, because you are hers entirely. Try and make it a priority to make sure she knows you love her, and that you’re safe. You would never believe the comfort that will come to your mother simply by saying “Night mom, I love you” before you go to bed at night. Believe it or not, even a drunken “good night love u!!!” will do just fine.
