The cold hard facts of maternal fears

The true horribleness of having a near perfect stranger in my house landed good and hard last night. What occurred is not so much the unbearable thing as my response mechanism - and I was fine, nothing bad happened, nothing bad got said and I am fairly certain no body parts were lost.

I should probably state right up front that I believe if you bring a nineteen year old into your house you're going to have to deal with nineteen year old behavior or assumptions, one way or another and that no matter how much screening you do in advance you never really know what you're going to get until you've got it. Same goes for dogs and horses too, by the way.

I was not comfortable with her request to go to Hartford on Day three of her arrival because we were very specifically told that these three days were very important in terms of family bonding and orrientation. I sat on her request, which was made a few weeks in advance of her arrival stateside, for a few days and stewed over the expressed desire versus the possible price and decided it would be all right given that school didn't start right away and she technically wouldn't be on duty immediately.

I was also not comfortable with her inability or unwillingness to accept the inevitable travel difficulties involved in moving by public transportation from one county to another. The trains run in and out of New York all day and most of the night but they only go as far as New Haven because that's pretty much the outer most limits of a survivable commute. After that you've got to either bus or pick up Amtrak which is not a commuters line at all, no matter what they'd like you to think. There's also the added confusion of working out how to make the ten mile trip to the train station in the first place. If you come home on Sunday night you can leave the car at the station but if it's going to be there come Monday morning it's just as likely to be towed before 8 AM as the overbooked and over reserved lots fill up.

The long and the short of it was I let her go and she was going to ride to the city by herself, meet up with her friend and then they'd make their way to Hartford on Sunday, find a hotel or motel and come back Monday morning. I didn't ask her how she was going to find or pay for a Sunday night hotel in Hartford. I just let it go, I do not need another late adolescent to parent, I'm still recovering from the boy.

It was a relief to have the house back at least momentarily. I'm really not so good with people in my personal space and I know this is going to take some getting used to. For example, she needs to learn to feed herself unless there's a meal being put on the table and that's only guaranteed if it's Monday through Thursday evening. All bets are off and you're on your own otherwise unless you are six years old and then I will make sure you're fed. I don't mean to sound harsh, I know it takes time to learn about a family and adjust but I think her mother did her laundry and fed her three meals a day if she was home. She'll get used to it or be hungry I think.

Last night the phone rang at 10 PM. First conversation when I get back home (which won't really be until Wednesday as I've got business engagements that will keep me out late both tonight and tomorrow) is about how late you can call. 10 PM is generally too late as I really ought to be well on my way to out cold by then. So she calls and I make my husband take the call because I am just not in the mood to be even remotely nice and I think, if you are calling this late, something is wrong and you are going to inconvenience me horribly and I have visions of driving the 75 miles to Hartford or where ever to rescue her sorry self because she has not found a room and the last Amtrak train leaves Hartford for New Haven at 8. Also, she simply would not consider coming home before the bloody bitter end because all the best bands are at the end. Whatever.

Husband says, yes, yes, well all right, we'll leave the front door unlocked (she has, for some reason, refused to take her house key because the girl will be home on Monday to let her in). He tells me that she and her friend from the city have met up with someone who is giving them a ride home and he heard male voices and the friend from NYC will be spending the night.

WTF??? Shrieks the voice in my head and then all hell breaks loose and I'm sitting there silently freaking the hell out over this, my stuff, but still:

This is the safe home of my daughters that I have worked very hard to create and maintain. You have met someone strange at a concert and he, out of the goodness of his heart, is going to drive you all the bloody way from Hartford into the woods of Weston because he's nice? And then let you and your friend walk through my safe front door and not follow? You will be lucky to make it home alive. You will be lucky to make it through my front door alive. You will be lucky to make it through the night with any skin on your body at all.

We discuss this, he and I and are of a similar mind having grown up in this part of the country and being a damn sight old enough to know better. I pour another glass of wine that I really should not be having and we watch bad television and wait until 11:30 when we hear the car door in the drive.

We go to the living room and wait. My oldest daughter is still up and I ask her if she should go to bed and she asks if I need her to and then I just say that I don't and it's all right but I am shaking inside.

Our house is a split level ranch with an expanded foyer. This means when you walk in the front door you feel as if you are in this rather grand entry way which is all Italian marble and intricate mosaic and chandelier (I'm working on getting rid of some of that but it's still quite too much for my taste) and you are immediately at a disadvantage if someone is waiting up those six stairs and staring down at you and even more at a disadvantage if those two someones are sitting just out of sight and you hear only the disembodied voices welcoming you home.

Only the two girls walked in the house and the door shut behind them. I stiffled the impulse to rush to the bedroom window to see who was in the car or not in the car. We chat briefly and I tell her that we stayed up to be sure that she is all right. The girls are visibly nervous and they should be. I did not meet the friend before hand and I would not have a stranger, male or female, come into my house at night without speaking first. Not with my girls in the house. Not with anyone in the house, quite honestly.

We go to bed and that is the end of it for the time being.

I am going to have to tell her what I thought and I am going to have to do it in such a way that she hears me. This is not about a nineteen year old getting her panties in a bunch because I do not trust her. Trust her to what? Put my children at risk? I know that I have superimposed my own fears onto the event but, as it turns out, that is my job.