Tempting Fate

Dear Fate,

I fear I've been tempting you. These last 2+ months have been nothing short of blissful. Sure, I feel tired. My thighs are fatter than I'd like. My new house is far from decorated perfectly. And I can't seem to get anything "done." But I have a beautiful baby girl. She's healthy. So am I. She cries infrequently and is easily consoled. She sleeps in 4-7 hour stretches at night. I have not once gotten bored or grown weary of staying at home. My husband admires my new role of mother, and delights in nothing more than hugging his baby girl and exchanging coos. We love our new home and enjoy the projects it requires. I have generous in-laws who adore their first grandchild. My dad lives nearby, and is always up to treat us to dinner out. I still have my hair, and it didn't come out in clumps like some friends warned it might post-partum. My husband bought me new "fly" running shoes, a bright aqua color that keep me comfy when I walk the dog or hit the gym. The days are long, and getting longer, and sometimes even sunny. And in less than a month my husband will be off work and we will have two whole weeks to hang out as a family of three. Sure, I have to go back to work, but at least I have a graduate degree, a profession I enjoy, and current employment.

But then I start to think, with all this good stuff going on, when's the other shoe going to drop? Life as I know it, for right now, seems too good to be true. I worry that because I didn't have difficulty getting pregnant, my pregnancy was unremarkable, my delivery was swift and safe, and my baby has been a delight - what's in store for me? Will Francie appear to have a cold/flu but be diagnosed with a congenital heart defect at 5 months? Will she start to demonstrate signs of a developmental delay at one? Is her toddler self going to wreak havoc? Will she be injured in a car wreck? As a pre-teen is she going to hate me, beyond what's considered age-appropriate angst? Am I going to get cancer? Will Alex decide that he wants a different life and leave me? Will my dad have a stroke and need round-the-clock-care? Will a 9.0 earthquake swallow up Portland? Will I lose my job, my house, and all that I will have worked for?

Other people have colicky babies. Or worse, babies with health problems. Other people have constant marital strife. Some haven't met anyone they click with. Other people have financial woes that far surpass my college loans and desire for a new iPhone. While still others are malnourished, without a roof over their heads, and living with AIDS in a war-torn country.

So what's all this talk about other people? What do they have to do with me anyhow? I'm not Catholic, nor was I raised with the notion of "Catholic guilt." But let's face it - I'm straight, I'm white, I'm middle class, I'm educated, I live in America, and I have love and support from friends and family - what's not to feel guilty about? Or, what's not to worry about? Sure, this can also manifest as gratitude - which I am, I'm very grateful for my good fortune - but I'm under no impression that I have somehow "earned" my place in this world.

Unfortunately, my guilt and subsequent anxiety is so often reinforced. Every time I worry about flying in a plane, I concentrate hard on helping to keep the plane afloat. And then when we land safely without incident, my behaviors are validated, as in "because I worried, that's why the plane didn't crash." Or, like when I was little, I believed, "because my parents had a baby who died, I won't be kidnapped or die from meningitis." Or, because my mom died when I was in college, my dad will live a long time.

So what's the opposite?

If everything goes well, then I'm in line for the next disaster.

Alex says the world doesn't work this way. Cognitively, I agree with him. But worry has a knack for overriding logic, which leaves me with the feeling that the other shoe to drop.* In the meantime, I'll just stare at the baby and try to solicit a smile.

*This idiom means to await a seemingly inevitable, undesirable event. It is comes from the early 20th century usage, "evoking a person in bed awoken by the loud sound of a neighbor dropping a shoe onto the floor, and thereafter waiting for the second shoe of the pair to be dropped."