“Simply put, there are 10 things to do regularly to increase your resistance to stress: Get enough sleep. Eat right. Exercise often. Dress for the weather. Express yourself. Practice daily pleasure. Look for the good. Cultivate a support system. Love them. Let them love you back.” – Holiday Mathis
Last night as we were finishing up a delicious, nutritious dinner, I nonchalantly asked my husband if our daughter had texted us that she had made it to her tennis lesson. Out of all four of our children, my daughter has always been the best about texting us about reaching her various destinations safely. We even complimented her on that fact, before she left for tennis. It was about a half hour after the lesson would have started, when we realized that she had not texted us. I called my daughter’s phone which went straight to voicemail. I waited a few minutes and called it again. Once again, it went straight to voicemail. I called her instructor. No answer. I made a few more increasingly desperate calls vacillating between my daughter’s phone and her coach’s phone. With no answers from either, I could feel my hysteria rising. Without much notice to my husband, I jumped into my car and I headed up to the location where my daughter takes tennis lessons, about 20 minutes away. Rides like these, feel like they are dragging out into eternity. Patience and calm have never been my higher virtues. I was madly angry at every single driver in the cars in front of me, for actually following the rules of the road and for driving slowly and safely. I was incredibly relieved to see no accidents or police lights shining from the sides of the road, as I frantically scanned the areas surrounding me. My husband remained at home, but stayed on the phone with me for the entire ride, to calm my nerves and to remind me to drive safely. We noticed that the tracking app he shares with her was disabled for some reason. We talked to each other about the fact that even the most responsible teenagers forget to text sometimes. We reassured each other that our daughter most likely was fine, and she probably just didn’t hear her phone ringing from the courts. I felt tears choking up in the back of my throat as I drove like a madwoman to the courts. I prayed out loud. My convertible top was down, so I felt my prayers being carried into the wind. When I finally came to the long windy drive to take me to the tennis courts, I saw my daughter’s car. I saw her doing “her thing”, out on the courts.
“Is that your mom?!” I heard one of her fellow teammates say. (I’m guessing I had a slightly crazed look on my face and my hair does get a bit of a manic look when the convertible top is down. Retrospectively, I am seeing myself resembling Disney’s Cruella Devil, at this particular moment)
“Why didn’t you text us?!” I tensely, (but still trying to stay under control), low-key screamed to her.
“I did,” she said as she scrambled to look at her phone. “On crap, it says ‘failed to send’ “, sorry, Mom!”
Her instructor said that she had been avoiding the calls, because the tennis instructor didn’t recognize my number, and she had been bombarded with election calls that she had learned to ignore. She apologized profusely.
I breathed out one of the longest held-in breaths which I’ve had in a long, long while, I wiped my eyes and I carefully and slowly drove home to my husband’s waiting arms. Last night, when my daughter came home from her lesson, I gave her an especially long hug and a kiss goodnight. I didn’t want to let go.
Moral of the story: No matter what, it’s all going to be okay. We know how to take care of ourselves. We know how to take care of each other. Rarely is anything as bad as it seems. Just breathe. Follow the ten simple commands above, and we will do fine with anything that life throws at us. Life is mostly good. The odds are in our favor. This is true. Relax and breathe.
