My Greatest Fear

or, as an alternate title, it's a good thing they're alive so now I can kill them.

Disclaimer: No Hickmans were injured during the course of this story.

My greatest fear is that something will happen to my children. I recognize the futility of attempting to wrap them in bubble wrap and confine them to their rooms, and I do my best to keep the crazy paranoia at bay, but it doesn't always work.

We live on a street with lots of families, and I'm grateful that the boys have kids in the neighborhood they can play with. They cavort from yard to yard playing football and what-have-you. I'm happy about this, yet I remind them about six hundred thousand times a day to "stay away from the street!" and "watch for cars because they can't see you!" and I do frequent checks to see if I can catch them being less careful than I think they should be so we can have a quick mini-lesson on how to watch for cars and stay away from the street. I know they are as safe as boys can be playing outside, and I know that boys should play outside with their friends, but still, I always fear they will be careless and something horrible will happen. I figure probably every parent feels this way.

In the scene I'm about to create, it's important to note that I've been feeling a little run down this week. I've been dragging myself out of bed every morning and doing my best to act like I feel great, but I feel exhausted. I think the problem is that I've gotten back into my gym routine, so at night I'm really tired. So tired, in fact, that I'm sleeping really hard. As a result, I've had these wild and crazy dreams every night for like two weeks. I'm doing hard work in these dreams - running from killers and escaping fires and warning people of disaster and such, and I think all that work is making me wake up tired. This is my hypothesis regarding my lethargy.

(It occurs to me here that it may seem to the outsider like I'm in need of a psychiatric evaluation. I won't agree or disagree.)

Tonight we got home from school around 5:15, and the boys immediately went outside to play basketball. I considered straightening the house a little or finding something for dinner, but ultimately I felt the need to crash on the couch for the twenty minutes I had before Keaton's basketball game.

So I dozed into a state of conscious oblivion and briefly wondered if anyone would notice if I just slept until tomorrow. I thought about turning off the living room light, but that would have required me to get up from the couch, so the idea quickly passed.

Then it happened.

The scream.

A blood curdling scream of panic echoed through the garage. I knew immediately it was Keaton screaming, and I could hear the terror in his voice. The scream was continuous and strong, so in that split second I knew that Keaton was okay but he had seen something terrible.

I leaped over the dog gate, threw my phone on the floor, and as I entered the garage I saw the neighbor's truck stopped at the end of his driveway. The back lights flared, so I knew it was running. Keaton was now screaming words, but all I heard was "Molly's dad!" and I could see Molly's dad running around to the back of his truck.

I did not see Tucker.

In the two and one half seconds that followed, my worst fears were realized. I knew in my heart that there was a person under the tires of that truck, and that our lives would never be the same. I was moving in slow motion in the beginning of a Lifetime movie, and I blamed myself for allowing my children to play outside and not sitting with them every minute and trying to take a quick nap and just all around being the worst mother ever. I saw a funeral and weeping and I knew that I would never, ever recover. It was my greatest fear realized.

And then I saw Tucker.

And then Molly's dad picked up a misshapen object from under his truck tire, raised it up, and said, "I popped their basketball."

And then Tucker began to scream. It was a blood curdling scream of panic. A scream delivered not because of serious bodily injury to a loved one, but because he just discovered that his basketball had been popped.

Seriously?

I mumbled, "Dear God, I thought it was a person," and I clutched my screaming-but-perfectly-fine children and retreated quickly into the house and began to sob. I'm sure Molly's dad probably considered the emotional stability of my household for a moment or two before he got back into the truck.

I cried, and when I calmed down, Keaton calmed down.

Tucker continued to wail. Wail terrible cries of lament and pain as he lay crumpled on our living room floor.

"Tucker," I said calmly, "It's just a basketball. We can get a new one."

"But I loved that basketball.  It was my favorite one. And now I can't play basketball anymore," he choked out between sobs.

I guess I just thought I had calmed down because crazy mommy surfaced so quickly.

I was crying and yelling at him. "I thought it was you!  I thought you were under that truck and it was horrible! You guys just scared me to death! I can't stop shaking! I thought you were run over, but it was just a stupid basketball!"

"IT WAS NOT STUPID! IT WAS MY FAVORITE ONE!!!!!!" he screamed.



And so the event ended as they often do at our house: "You are being ridiculous. You've been screaming for five minutes and I'm not listening to it anymore. Go to your room until you can get some control of yourself."

I guess tomorrow we'll buy a new basketball.