wor·ry Pronunciation Key - [wur-ee, wuhr-ee] verb, -ried, -ry·ing, noun, plural -ries.
–verb (used without object)
1. to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret.
This is the definition of my mother-in-law. As much as I love her - and I truly do - I have never seen anyone with a better ability to take regular, everyday occurrences, and wind them around in her mind until she can come up with the worst-case-scenario. She has perfected the art of building mountains out of little mole-hills. I think she comes by it naturally. And by that I mean I think it's firmly embedded in her DNA. I make that assumption based on the stories she tells about her own mother, and her mother-in-law. And just so you understand where I'm coming from, let me share with you a couple of gems from her past. As Fran tells it, whenever her kids were getting ready to play on the playground in the park down the street her mother would tell them the following: "You kids need to be careful on that playground! There was a little boy who was playing on a playground once, and he slid down the slide and fell into a man-hole that was in the ground at the bottom of the slide. Someone left it uncovered.......and they never found him ever again!"
On other occasions, Fran tells about the advice she got from her mother-in-law when she brought her first baby home from the hospital. It went like this: "You know, you have to make sure that there is a hole poked in the nipple of the baby's bottle. There was a woman who brought her baby home and never checked to see if the bottle nipple had a hole in it and her baby starved to death!" Apparently Fran had to hear that story over and over and over again whenever she brought a baby home from the hospital, regardless of how many times she reassured her mother-in-law that there was a hole in the bottle nipple and her babies weren't going to starve to death.
–verb (used without object)
1. to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret.
This is the definition of my mother-in-law. As much as I love her - and I truly do - I have never seen anyone with a better ability to take regular, everyday occurrences, and wind them around in her mind until she can come up with the worst-case-scenario. She has perfected the art of building mountains out of little mole-hills. I think she comes by it naturally. And by that I mean I think it's firmly embedded in her DNA. I make that assumption based on the stories she tells about her own mother, and her mother-in-law. And just so you understand where I'm coming from, let me share with you a couple of gems from her past. As Fran tells it, whenever her kids were getting ready to play on the playground in the park down the street her mother would tell them the following: "You kids need to be careful on that playground! There was a little boy who was playing on a playground once, and he slid down the slide and fell into a man-hole that was in the ground at the bottom of the slide. Someone left it uncovered.......and they never found him ever again!"
On other occasions, Fran tells about the advice she got from her mother-in-law when she brought her first baby home from the hospital. It went like this: "You know, you have to make sure that there is a hole poked in the nipple of the baby's bottle. There was a woman who brought her baby home and never checked to see if the bottle nipple had a hole in it and her baby starved to death!" Apparently Fran had to hear that story over and over and over again whenever she brought a baby home from the hospital, regardless of how many times she reassured her mother-in-law that there was a hole in the bottle nipple and her babies weren't going to starve to death.
And so it went. An entire childhood and adult life filled with story after story after story about how awful things - usually resulting in death or disappearance - happened to seemingly benign people going about their everyday activities. So like I said -- It's in her DNA. How can you spend your entire life listening to paranoid stories of how kids died from sliding down slides, or from not getting any milk from their bottles, and God only knows what else, and not have it rub off on you in some way, shape, or form? So now that she's the grandma, I think it's firmly embedded in her psyche that it's her "job" to worry about things that could happen, or what the worst-case scenario might be -- no matter how unlikely. I could cite countless examples, but instead I'll just share with you a few of the best.
One disastrous Christmas, when every single member of the Kafsky family was cooped up in a lodge together for a week, (I think there were right around 20 of us) my sister-in-law, Elise, started throwing up. She had a couple of other symptoms too, but I'll spare you the details, except to tell you that in our house we refer to it as 'butt and gut'. For some reason it was common knowledge that she'd recently started her period, too. Now, just to set the stage for you, I'll give you these details: Elise has a young daughter who attended daycare at the time. And anyone who has had his or her child in daycare knows that, as wonderful as daycare can be, they are also little petri-dishes; just ripe for passing all kinds of lovely things from child to child, from child to parent, and from parent to other unsuspecting adults. So, when Elise started doing the Ol' Heave Ho, I figured that she had a tummy bug. However, that was NOT the the logical conclusion drawn by Fran, who sat fretting away at a table armed to the teeth with a shovel made expressly for piling lots of worry onto the tops of her molehills. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Elise had Toxic Shock Syndrome. And certainly we wouldn't be responsible family members if we didn't rush her to the emergency room. In Fran's mind a virus was not the likely culprit. Yes indeed, the most likely scenario was TSS. "Don't you think she just has a stomach bug?" I asked. "I can't imagine that she has Toxic Shock Syndrome. I guess I don't know that much about it, but isn't TSS pretty rare?" For a few hours I did my best to reassure her, but to no avail. And though we didn't actually take Elise to the emergency room, Fran really, really wanted to. As it turned out, Elise did have a stomach bug. And by the end of the week, so did all the rest of us. It went like wild-fire, taking each and every one of us down, one soldier at a time.
Another time, we were all traveling to Cleveland, Ohio to see some extended family. All 20-something of us. Since our homes are all scattered across the Southeast, we met at Fran's house in Virginia to carpool the rest of the way. Somehow, as we were getting organized to start the caravan, my niece got ahold of a stray pill in Fran's bedroom and ate it. I found her standing in the middle of the room making an awful face and spitting out the remnants. "I think Reid was eating a pill -- but she spit most of it out." I announced in the kitchen. "Do you know what is was?" Through a course of questions the pill was determined to be iron. Everyone was pretty calm about the whole thing until Fran began constructing her mountain. She worried and fretted and then threw her first shovel full: She announced that iron is the number one killer of children in the US!!! There was a pause, and then a mad scramble for the phone to call poison control. "I think she spit most of it out..." I offered again. "Really....." The Poison Control Woman who fielded our call asked if the pills were over-the-counter, or if they were prescription. "Over-the-counter" answered my mother-in-law. "Then she should be fine." said the Poison Control Woman, "as long as it wasn't prescription." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and got into their respective cars to finish the 5 hour drive to Cleveland. Fran was in our car and I could see her fret, fret, fretting away as she sat in the passenger seat. (Mentally scooping another shovel full of worry.) "I think we should take Reid to the emergency room." she said. No one really responded. She mentioned it again. "Look," I said "I don't think we need to take Reid to the emergency room. It wasn't prescription, and I really don't think she ingested that much of it. And if she does start to feel bad or get sick, we can take her then. It's not like we don't know what she got into. OK?" Fran nodded, but it wasn't convincing. I could see her worrying away...... Then she said "I think it might have been prescription, " carefully adding another shovel full of worry onto the top of the iron-pill molehill. Mike said "Was it, or wasn't it?" She couldn't remember. "How can you not know?" he asked. "Did you have a prescription for them or not?" She didn't know. (Scoop, scoop, shovel, shovel......) She rolled down her window as Reid's dad was walking past carrying the last of their belongings to the car. "I think it was prescription!" she yelled. She simply can't help herself.
Which brings me around to her most recent case of mountain building, worst-case-scenario, worry-wartness. We recently held our 6th annual pumpkin carvin' party, and most of my in-laws were in attendance. It's a great time; Thoroughly chaotic, with lots of nieces and nephews running around, but definitely a great time. We had a lot of prep work to do to get ready to host all the pumpkin carvers, so Fran and my brother-in-law, Ryan, were wrangling the kids. I cooked and cleaned house, and Mike finished mowing the lawn, hanging ghosts, and putting up other spooky decorations outside. After a few hours, Fran came in and told me that Landis was holding his penis a lot. "Oh, that." I said. "He's always holding it. He really likes it. It's no big deal." She went back outside. A little while later she came back in. She'd been outside piling some worry onto her molehill. "You know, I think something's wrong with him. He holds it a lot." she told me. "Trust me," I replied."He just likes to hold it. Seriously. He talks to it and everything. I promise he's fine. You don't have to worry about it." But of course, she did. It's in her DNA. It's her job as a grandmother. She came back. "I do really think it's bothering him, and he gets embarrassed when I ask him about it. Can you ask him if it's bothering him? I told Mike about it and he snapped at me." "Sure" I replied. If asking him would ease her mind, I'd be happy to do it. I went to find Landis. He was in the bathroom with Mike. Mike was turning the shower on and Landis was undressing. "Can you shower him?" Mike asked me. "He's filthy, and we're supposed to check out his penis. I finally lost it with my mom because she was following me around talking about the problems with Landis' penis. I'm tired of hearing about his penis." So I helped Landis take a shower, and I checked everything out. It all looked fine. But just to make sure, I asked him as I was drying him off. "Hey Landis," I said. "How's your peenee feeling?" He looked me straight in the face and answered with the kind of earnest sincerity that only a sweet little blue eyed 3-year old can muster. "Fwesh and cwean!!!!" "Fresh and clean?" I asked, barely able to contain myself. "Really? It doesn't hurt or anything?" "No." "Does it itch?" "No." "So it feels fine?" "Mommy, it feels fwesh and cwean!" Good enough for me. I reported my findings back to Fran. "He says it feels 'fwesh and cwean'. I told her. She looked skeptical, but what did I expect? She can't help it. It's in her DNA.
One disastrous Christmas, when every single member of the Kafsky family was cooped up in a lodge together for a week, (I think there were right around 20 of us) my sister-in-law, Elise, started throwing up. She had a couple of other symptoms too, but I'll spare you the details, except to tell you that in our house we refer to it as 'butt and gut'. For some reason it was common knowledge that she'd recently started her period, too. Now, just to set the stage for you, I'll give you these details: Elise has a young daughter who attended daycare at the time. And anyone who has had his or her child in daycare knows that, as wonderful as daycare can be, they are also little petri-dishes; just ripe for passing all kinds of lovely things from child to child, from child to parent, and from parent to other unsuspecting adults. So, when Elise started doing the Ol' Heave Ho, I figured that she had a tummy bug. However, that was NOT the the logical conclusion drawn by Fran, who sat fretting away at a table armed to the teeth with a shovel made expressly for piling lots of worry onto the tops of her molehills. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Elise had Toxic Shock Syndrome. And certainly we wouldn't be responsible family members if we didn't rush her to the emergency room. In Fran's mind a virus was not the likely culprit. Yes indeed, the most likely scenario was TSS. "Don't you think she just has a stomach bug?" I asked. "I can't imagine that she has Toxic Shock Syndrome. I guess I don't know that much about it, but isn't TSS pretty rare?" For a few hours I did my best to reassure her, but to no avail. And though we didn't actually take Elise to the emergency room, Fran really, really wanted to. As it turned out, Elise did have a stomach bug. And by the end of the week, so did all the rest of us. It went like wild-fire, taking each and every one of us down, one soldier at a time.
Another time, we were all traveling to Cleveland, Ohio to see some extended family. All 20-something of us. Since our homes are all scattered across the Southeast, we met at Fran's house in Virginia to carpool the rest of the way. Somehow, as we were getting organized to start the caravan, my niece got ahold of a stray pill in Fran's bedroom and ate it. I found her standing in the middle of the room making an awful face and spitting out the remnants. "I think Reid was eating a pill -- but she spit most of it out." I announced in the kitchen. "Do you know what is was?" Through a course of questions the pill was determined to be iron. Everyone was pretty calm about the whole thing until Fran began constructing her mountain. She worried and fretted and then threw her first shovel full: She announced that iron is the number one killer of children in the US!!! There was a pause, and then a mad scramble for the phone to call poison control. "I think she spit most of it out..." I offered again. "Really....." The Poison Control Woman who fielded our call asked if the pills were over-the-counter, or if they were prescription. "Over-the-counter" answered my mother-in-law. "Then she should be fine." said the Poison Control Woman, "as long as it wasn't prescription." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and got into their respective cars to finish the 5 hour drive to Cleveland. Fran was in our car and I could see her fret, fret, fretting away as she sat in the passenger seat. (Mentally scooping another shovel full of worry.) "I think we should take Reid to the emergency room." she said. No one really responded. She mentioned it again. "Look," I said "I don't think we need to take Reid to the emergency room. It wasn't prescription, and I really don't think she ingested that much of it. And if she does start to feel bad or get sick, we can take her then. It's not like we don't know what she got into. OK?" Fran nodded, but it wasn't convincing. I could see her worrying away...... Then she said "I think it might have been prescription, " carefully adding another shovel full of worry onto the top of the iron-pill molehill. Mike said "Was it, or wasn't it?" She couldn't remember. "How can you not know?" he asked. "Did you have a prescription for them or not?" She didn't know. (Scoop, scoop, shovel, shovel......) She rolled down her window as Reid's dad was walking past carrying the last of their belongings to the car. "I think it was prescription!" she yelled. She simply can't help herself.
Which brings me around to her most recent case of mountain building, worst-case-scenario, worry-wartness. We recently held our 6th annual pumpkin carvin' party, and most of my in-laws were in attendance. It's a great time; Thoroughly chaotic, with lots of nieces and nephews running around, but definitely a great time. We had a lot of prep work to do to get ready to host all the pumpkin carvers, so Fran and my brother-in-law, Ryan, were wrangling the kids. I cooked and cleaned house, and Mike finished mowing the lawn, hanging ghosts, and putting up other spooky decorations outside. After a few hours, Fran came in and told me that Landis was holding his penis a lot. "Oh, that." I said. "He's always holding it. He really likes it. It's no big deal." She went back outside. A little while later she came back in. She'd been outside piling some worry onto her molehill. "You know, I think something's wrong with him. He holds it a lot." she told me. "Trust me," I replied."He just likes to hold it. Seriously. He talks to it and everything. I promise he's fine. You don't have to worry about it." But of course, she did. It's in her DNA. It's her job as a grandmother. She came back. "I do really think it's bothering him, and he gets embarrassed when I ask him about it. Can you ask him if it's bothering him? I told Mike about it and he snapped at me." "Sure" I replied. If asking him would ease her mind, I'd be happy to do it. I went to find Landis. He was in the bathroom with Mike. Mike was turning the shower on and Landis was undressing. "Can you shower him?" Mike asked me. "He's filthy, and we're supposed to check out his penis. I finally lost it with my mom because she was following me around talking about the problems with Landis' penis. I'm tired of hearing about his penis." So I helped Landis take a shower, and I checked everything out. It all looked fine. But just to make sure, I asked him as I was drying him off. "Hey Landis," I said. "How's your peenee feeling?" He looked me straight in the face and answered with the kind of earnest sincerity that only a sweet little blue eyed 3-year old can muster. "Fwesh and cwean!!!!" "Fresh and clean?" I asked, barely able to contain myself. "Really? It doesn't hurt or anything?" "No." "Does it itch?" "No." "So it feels fine?" "Mommy, it feels fwesh and cwean!" Good enough for me. I reported my findings back to Fran. "He says it feels 'fwesh and cwean'. I told her. She looked skeptical, but what did I expect? She can't help it. It's in her DNA.
