They will be all right
Welborn, Amy
THE LAST WORD THEY WILL BE ALL RIGHT Amy Welborn We're on our way back from the midweek, Mom-can't-cook-tonight fast-food din-ner, and I pull into the service station near my house to fill up the...
...the han-dle on the passenger side is broken...
...Tears gather unbidden in the corners of my eyes, and my throat tightens in gratitude for the gift...
...Is God real for them...
...For me, as for many, it is divorce: a divorce I instigated when my oldest son was ten, at a time when I looked at the rest of my life and saw it as one long, dark tunnel...
...But was I being selfish...
...Most parents worry because our fam-ilies are not quite the families we thought we would build, our world has not evolved as we expected...
...When they are tempted to quell their restlessness with drugs, drink, or pre-mature sex, will they find peace instead in God...
...Little sister Katie is in the middle, holding the hands of her two brothers on either side...
...It is a gift I did not ask for but can-not ignore...
...I don't know whether it's the fumes rising from the gas tanks or the humid-ity rising from the Florida earth, but for a moment my children appear to be floating in ripples of air, figures in a dream, a little girl skipping between boys whose hold on her small hands seems careless but, I can tell even from an increasing distance, is actually as un-yielding as Egyptian mortar...
...Parents in America have rea-son to fret over how to rear decent hu-man beings in an often corrupt and degrading culture, threatened by eco-nomic insecurity, hearing daily about vi-olence almost everywhere...
...I had driven them this far in this slightly shabby yet still serviceable ve-hicle, the only one available to me, and they had spilled out of it, sent to go the rest of the way on their own...
...Catholic schools, weekly Mass, con-stant discussions of religion at home...
...but is it enough...
...Katie's head turns from side to side as she fol-lows the conversation...
...I've kept asking, even though the children seem to understand, even though my oldest has told me, more than once, that it's better that his father and I are no longer married...
...Maybe...
...The jokes are be-yond her, but she laughs because the boys do...
...With cause...
...I can hear that they've picked up on a conversa-tion begun in the car, reciting again what to them are the hysterically funny bits of a Monty Python movie...
...Like a great many others, I have spent the biggest part of my mothering years- almost fifteen of them now-worrying...
...Are we all better off...
...For a moment, I am busy fitting the gas hose into my tank...
...when I look up they are well on their way, halfway across the parking lot...
...THE LAST WORD THEY WILL BE ALL RIGHT Amy Welborn We're on our way back from the midweek, Mom-can't-cook-tonight fast-food din-ner, and I pull into the service station near my house to fill up the tank for the upcoming week of chauffering du-ties...
...Are we doing enough...
...This evening, I get my answer: They will be all right...
...And, leaning against my car in the still-ness of early evening, something sweeps over me that is weightier than a thought, stronger than a feeling...
...And we have our own histories, our particular family stories that make us fear, in a psychologized age, that our chil-dren will be damaged beyond repair, or propelled into life-long therapy...
...I give them the house key and tell them to walk the short distance to our house and start their homework...
...They are out of sight and hearing now, but the One who molded them within me as-sures me that I have indeed done enough because it was all I could do, and they have all the confidence they need to go the rest of the way, and unlock the doors to whatever places they will call home...
...Will they be okay...
...The boys are engaged in routine, rit-ualized bickering as they exit through the one working door in the back, and one of them must come to the front to open my daughter's front door...
...It is knowledge from the place where truth resides, per-haps within me, perhaps somewhere else...
...I follow the three unique and precious people born from my body, assured that they have reached their destination safely...
...Next paycheck, I tell them, it will all be fixed...
...I worry too about their spiritual lives...
...They will be all right, it whis-pers...
Vol. 124 • June 1997 • No. 12
