Scared

When I was a young kid, even a young adult, I hated staying at home alone at night.  I lived at home until I got married and while away at college, I probably only stayed in our little house twice (in three years) alone. If my roommates were going to be gone for the night, I planned to come home or have company over. I didn’t even like to stay in the dorm room alone even though there were some 40 other girls right down the hall.

Then, I got married. 

Eight weeks before our wedding, Skip took a job that required a massive amount of traveling.  The longest time he was away was five weeks.  A month before we got married while Skip was living in our house alone, It was broken into while he was away at a race and I was at the beach with my mom. By the time he returned, I had had an alarm system installed.  After the wedding, I began staying home alone.  I still remember the anxiousness of the first few nights.  I made Skip hang a shade on the kitchen door because when I went to the potty at night, I thought someone could look in and see me.  I kept the alarm set at all times when I was home alone. 

Eventually, I got used to staying by myself.  One night I went to sleep without a knot in my belly and I have been pretty carefree about the whole thing ever since.  We even cut the alarm system monitoring out of the budget for a while and I still slept like a baby. 

Tonight, like many nights, Skip left to go back to the office around 7PM.  He kissed us goodnight and dead bolted the door behind him, and Layla and I headed upstairs to play in her room.  As she was winding down and beginning to nurse before bed, she seemed unsettled and looked intently at the monitor on the wall.  As soon as I looked, I was unsettled, too.  The monitor camera, which stays positioned downward to let us look in her crib, was pointing right at the rocker where we were sitting.  I was instantly scared.  I had been the one to turn the camera off this morning and I knew I had not changed the position.  I called Skip, but got no response, so I texted him: “I’m scared, probably for nothing, but call me.”  He immediately did and I explained what had me spooked.  He offered to come home but at first I said that wasn’t necessary.  Even though his office is only two miles away, it seemed silly and I didn’t want to waste his time.  I asked him to just talk to me until I finished feeding Layla and laid her down.  The longer I sat there in the quiet and imagined going down the stairs, the more scared I got, and I finally just asked Skip to come home.  He stayed on the phone with me the whole time and made it home even quicker than usual and, of course, no one was in the house watching me nurse my baby from my bedroom on a 3x4’ screen.  (And if they had been, they could have easily done me harm by the time Skip got home-weapon drawn!).

Skip stayed with me for a while, giving himself a chance to calm down as well, and he never made me feel silly or like I had bothered him.  He’s stressed about several projects and upcoming appointments, but I did not feel like an inconvenience.  He kept reassuring me that he always wants me to tell him when I am scared.  He offered several times to bring his laptop home for the night and work with our less than stellar internet speed.  Of course, I was over being scared by then and ready to do my Bikini Body Mommy workout without an audience, so I sent him back to work. 

So now I’m sitting here in the quiet house again, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this man I get to share my life with. Sometimes I know he doesn’t feel like I need him. Sometimes when I do, it comes out as more of a demand than a request. I never grew out of the “I do it myself” stage and I like things the way I like things WHEN I like things, so I do them myself most of the time.  Frankly, there was no man around to check closets and haul furniture and get the oil changed when I was growing up, so mom and I did it ourselves.  I am so glad I don’t have to do it myself anymore.  I am so grateful that Layla gets to grow up with a Daddy who would rather drive home and give her mama piece of mind than finish a project or make a sale.  I am so lucky that Skip knows me well enough to know that I would’ve come down those stairs and checked out the bedroom and the monitor all by myself, but that I really, really, really did not want to. 

*****

There seems to be no explanation for the monitor being pointed at the rocker.  I was the one to turn off the base this morning and when I did, it was facing into the crib.  We had to replace the monitor over the weekend, so that makes the whole thing even more strange!