I Was Just Worried About You, Dad

I don’t have professional training in how to worry. But as a parent, I find that it comes quite naturally.

Afterall, that’s what we’re supposed to do as parents – worry.

My son is going on a trip with a friend? Time to worry.

My daughter is going out on a date? Uh-oh.

My son is going to bed for the night? Time to really start worrying! Oh, wait! I meant time to really start relaxing.

But you know what I mean. As parents, we are just naturally concerned about our kids.

So it was a bit of surprised the other day when I found out that it was my son who was worried about me.

My son was staying with my mom. And I was at home. Well, sort of. I was in the town where we lived about an hour away.

It was around 5 in the afternoon. I was at the college where I teach, all set to give a test. And I could tell it was about to rain.

How could I tell? Easy. The chance of rain was only about 10 percent. That’s as close to a sure thing as you can get. If the prediction had been hovering around, say, 90 percent, then the best thing to do at that point would be to plan a picnic.

As we sat there, the clouds came in, along with alerts from the National Weather Service. At 6:15 it was as dark as midnight.

The wind gusted across campus, shaking trees with moves normally only seen at a frat party.

And then came the rain, coming down so hard that it looked like the special effects in one of those cheesy sci-fi movies I enjoy so much.

But that was it. No hail. No tornadoes. No hurricanes.

And while I was thankful for that, I was most thankful for the fact that my son hadn’t been around. He hates storms, and I knew he would have been particularly frightened by this one.

But in this case, he was just as worried about me.

The next morning when I checked my phone, there was a voice mail from my son.

“Dad. Are you ok? I know it got bad there last night, and I was just worried about you.”

I called and told him I was ok. That it really wasn’t bad at home at all. I could feel his relief travel through the phone line (well, through the mobile towers, anyway).

“I was so worried about you, dad.”

There are so many things in this world that we worry about in relation to our kids. Most of those things have about the same chance of happening as winning the Powerball.

And we forget sometimes, that while we’re looking out for our kids, they have an eye out for us.

Afterall the world’s a big place, and our kids can’t help but worry about us as well.