Separation Anxiety

Amy Welborn

Word Count 1647

My husband died. Then, my father. And then, I decided to homeschool my kids.

I was in my early fifties by then, and they were the last two (of five) at home. Everyone had been to regular school, a mix of public and Catholic, and by then, it had been decades of weekly folders and busy work, and I was tired of it. I also knew that my kids deserved better, and I actually did have the time and ability to give it to them. A last chance, really. Both paths involved sacrifice, suffering, and, yes, pain in the ass. Which would I choose? Which was the most bearable at the moment? Over months of stewing, homeschooling seemed to be winning. 

Problem: I didn’t really want to. Oh, I did because homeschooling is kind of cool now, but I also very much did not want to. Why? Laziness, selfishness, I suppose. They were a little skeptical themselves, torn between competing goods—be with my friends all day or get to sleep past seven every day? 

There was another reason for my doubt, though, and it was about fear. Not a fear of being unable to teach them – for I served my time as a classroom teacher and am insufferably devoted to the teachable moment. No, I have to say that at the time, my homeschooling hesitation was mostly about a fear of adding to, rather than soothing, their pain. 

My relationship with my own (long-dead) mother had been fraught. As in, from the age of about eleven, we didn’t get along at all, and for the rest of her life. (Whose fault? Both, I’ll admit). I couldn’t imagine being homeschooled by my mother, spending all day every day with her, what it would have been like to have no escape, and no, I wouldn’t wish that, anything like that on my own.

Their father had died three years before of a heart attack while on a treadmill, leaving them and leaving me with the task, the duty, to tend the wounds of our loss. There was, I felt, a lot of potential for screwing up, for not only failing to heal the wounds but deepening them. Did they need more of me or less? I didn’t really know. 

Over time, though, the risk seemed worth it, as they got more and more bored with school. With my father’s death came a moderate inheritance, and so the idea came - go to Europe for a few months. Start the “homeschooling journey” as we call it now, so far away from actual home that I’d have no opportunity to run to the principal in August, having chickened out. 

And at least we’d be somewhere other than Alabama, away from the routes that took me daily by the YMCA where he died, the hospital where his dead body had waited for me, from the schools the boys had to return to after his funeral, dazed.

Once in Europe, we had lived in Paris for a month, welcomed two sets of guests from the States, and been to the Louvre and other museums, Notre Dame, and other churches. Had wandered Parisian streets, mastered subways, and eaten countless baguettes. They’d been to the Asterix and Obelisk amusement park, walked with the sick in the candlelight in Lourdes, paddled down the Dordogne, ridden a cantankerous mule in the Pyrenees, stood under the Pont du Gard, toured the Haribo factory and been utterly indifferent to the sticker shock that had hit me in Switzerland. 

And now we were in Italy, on a train to Pavia, where we’d stay for a week or so, then down to Assisi, then Rome, and then home. 

We had our habits, our systems. They were (and are) great travelers: observant, patient, cooperative, curious. I couldn’t think of anything that had gone wrong. I was satisfied and confident that this had, indeed, been the right thing. I could do this – we could do it, and we were, no problem. Was this life now? Yes, and it was pretty good. Crazy, gorgeous memories were filling up space. And there was a lot of space. 

We’d left Lausanne on the train, which had made brief stops along the way, including a longer one - but still just a few minutes -  in Milan. Pavia was our destination—a mid-sized city, the home of an ancient university and a saint. St. Anthony, whom you might know as St. Anthony of Padua, is what we call the city in English. 

The train slowed. By this time, we were well-versed in the ways of European trains: as in, you have no time. Join the clutch at the door and get moving as soon as it opens. The train will only be in the station for a moment.  

I gave instructions, foolproof instructions:  You two get off, and I’ll hand you the bags.

The train stopped, the doors opened. My sons – ages seven and eleven -  jumped down to the platform. I pushed one bag down to them. Then another. One more to go, then me.

The doors closed. The train started moving. And the last thing I saw through the window? My older son, his face crumpled, his arms outstretched, running, his mouth open, calling, I knew, MOM!

The second worst moment of my life.  I banged the door, pushed a button, the train kept moving. I raced up and down the car, yelling, bambini! Ragazzi! There wasn’t a soul who could help, only other riders, Italians gazing at the crazy American woman desperately afraid for her children’s safety, hearing the voices, loud now, that had been whispering for a good while: this was stupid. What were you thinking? Why did you think this would help them? What have you done? One more experience of loss, more pain. And this one is all your fault. 

A very kind older man took hold of me and indicated that when we got to Venice – the next stop, only about twenty minutes away – he would help me, and he did. He found a train employee and explained the situation, acting out my son’s cry and outstretched arms – Mama! That employee called back to Pavia and confirmed that yes, the boys were safe in the station office. We’d talked, after all, several times about what to do if we got separated – on the subway had been my fear. What do you do if you get on the train but I can’t? We get off at the next station and wait. What do you do if I get on and you can’t? We wait. 

They waited, and thank God whoever helped them was kind and not evil, for yes, they could have been evil, and my own heart would feel as if it stopped when I think about that possibility later. 

The man led me down under the tracks and put me on the next train to Pavia. It was only about twenty more minutes, but it felt, of course, like far more. I found them in the office, and while the older boy raced to embrace me, the seven-year-old glared and said, I’m never riding a train again. 

He did, of course. He had no choice. As it happens so often, even any possibly bad memories associated with the “time you left us at the train station” were erased a week later when we were leaving. There were protests in Pavia and all over Italy that day. Students and others marching, yelling, blowing trumpets, and beating cymbals and drums, protesting government austerity measures. The police were out, and it was such a mess, the cab driver couldn’t get us all the way to the station. 

When we finally got there – dropped at the back, walking through crowds – I left the boys sitting at a table while I went – it was just a few feet, I promise! – into a convenience store to get water and snacks for the journey to Assisi. When I emerged, the seven-year-old, so angry in this same place a week before, was excited. “Mom!” he said, “we saw someone get arrested!  And it was the police lady who helped us when you left us!”

On our last night in Rome, the Pavia disaster in the past was slowly becoming a story to tell and, if not laugh at yet, at least not to cry about. There were plenty of other wonderful memories to pull up, and so, in my maternal teachable moment guise, I gathered them and tried, as I thought I should, as it seemed right, sum everything up and bring this chapter to a beautiful close. I told them how proud I was of them, what a good time I’d had, and how I hoped they’d had a good time, too.

And just like that, the eleven-year-old burst into hard, gulping tears. 

To this day, I don’t understand why, and who knows, he might not even remember the moment. At the time, I thought – is he sad to go? Surely not. It’s fall. He’s missed watching football and is ready to be an American kid in America again. Is he just relieved to be going back?  Did he actually hate this? Had I misread his pain and what it might take to help bind those wounds?

It even occurred to me – is he thinking – or not thinking, but feeling – if Daddy hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have made us do this? And I could be home?

And the train. Oh, the train. The moment might become a joke, might even be forgotten. The young boy who was three when his father died might not remember anything about him as he ages himself. But who knows what lies underneath the fading scars? 

Pain. Loss. It all happens. Some you can’t choose, some you can. Some you can understand, others you can’t. You can think through them, you can feel. You might see what seems to be healing; you might fix it, but then you might be wrong. I might be wrong. I was, I wasn’t, I will be, I won’t. All I can do is keep choosing, choosing the most tolerable, most loving pain in the ass at any given moment, mindful of the wounds and doing what I can - no matter how crazy it seems -  to help them heal.  

Amy has been writing for over three decades. Her articles have been published in America, Commonweal, The New York Times, Dappled Things and many other periodicals. She's the author of over thirty books on spirituality and faith and one sadly unpublished novel. She has five kids, the youngest two of whom do not seem to have a lingering fear of trains. She writes from Alabama at the moment and can be found at amywelborn.wordrpress.com.