Yesterday I got a call from my son Andy in Liberia. He wanted to let me know that he would be COMPLETELY off the grid for the next week as he will be with his neighbors at a house of theirs which is 10 hours away by motor-bike! He was able to put international calling on his phone briefly just to notify me that they had arrived safely. But he said his phone would be unusable for the week and he didn’t want us to worry.
I can’t imagine an even more “off the grid” place than the village that he has been in for the past year and a half, and I can’t imagine a 10-hour motorbike ride on any kind of road, let alone the “roads” that they have in Liberia! But he said I shouldn’t worry. Yet worrying is what I do best! So, just as I was talking myself out of worrying for the week, I got a call from my OTHER son, who is here in town and he had just gotten into a car accident about 10 minutes from our house! He is okay, but it was still a wake-up call.
I guess you just never know what is hiding around the next corner of life. When Andy went to Liberia last year, friends of mine would often ask me how I felt about him being so far away. I worried for sure, but then a few months after he left, a woman was hit by a car in the parking lot at the Market Basket store where he used to work and I realized that bad stuff can happen absolutely anywhere. So, for the past year and a half, while I have thought about him a lot, I have been pretty good about not really worrying. Though I admit that I was worried for a short while this morning after he called.
We can only do so much to keep our kids (and ourselves) safe. Life can unfold in some strange ways, and the one lesson that I am learning from all of this is to expect the unexpected. I imagine I will always worry about my boys in one way or another, but it feels kind of freeing to realize that some things are just not worth worrying about because they are completely out of my control.
