My astrologer tells me to let go of the panic.
“You really have to let go of that, because it’s going to hold you back,” she says, in that calm, no-nonsense way she has. Is she from the Midwest? I find myself wondering, but I don’t ask. Maybe I knew once, but I forget.
I write down what she says, as I do every six months or so when I talk to her, so I can revisit her insights and advice. This advice, I know, I should repeat like a mantra.
Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.
It wells up in me, usually in the threes. I wake up with a start and check the clock. If I am lucky, it is closer to four, which I have grown to think of as a reasonable time to get up and move about. If I am not lucky, it can be in the ones, or twos. But there is no sense in lying there, worrying, right?
When I get up, at whatever hour, I try to center myself and rid my mind of the disaster scenarios my subconscious has dug up in the dead of night. I need to calm down and focus, and the flickering light of candles helps, the scent of the Nag Champa burning soothes.
I have to calm down, for my kids.
“I’m stressed, all the time,” the little one told me nonchalantly after his shower recently, as he carefully gelled his hair slightly up in front.
Panic, panic.
“Really?” I said. “Because you seem to handle it all very well.”
I really didn’t want to disagree with him, to deny his feelings and his sense of reality. But he does seem to be holding it together, from where I stand. But that is the thing. We always stand outside of someone else’s reality, even our own children’s. They were part of us once, ladies, yes. But they are not part of us any longer. They are their own beings, with their own thoughts and their own realities.
“I think you have a lot to think about, a lot to handle,” I said. “Everyone does. But it seems to me that you are doing so quite well.”
As I say this, I wonder to myself, how does one judge how well someone is doing? What criteria are we imagining comes into play?
When I wake up some mornings in literal and metaphoric darkness, I sometimes rouse my husband. I might do it subtly (tossing and turning can work, or a cough,) or more obviously (“Hey, are you up? I’m in a panic,” is the most direct.)
He’ll turn and mumble, “Why?” and I’ll run through all the trouble in my mind, much of it related to our children.
Whatever I say, whatever my worry, he’s generally consistent in his response: “They’ll be fine,” he says.
Now, arguably, his greatest desire is to go back to sleep, and he knows that a little reassurance is the fastest route to getting there. But I also know he’s right. They’ll be fine.
Stressing over the finer details, the “Did he get invited to that party, does he do well in math, how much does he really give it in baseball,’ is bound to come through to the kids. And my stress can easily become their stress. So…
Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic. I have to listen to the advice of my astrologer, to my husband. I know if I believe, truly, that all is right with the world, I can make it so, if even in my own mind.
And my own mind is a wonderful place to start.
