Fear and Love and Crying at the Movies

I knew I shouldn't have watched. Nothing on tv bothers me like the sad fate of an old married couple losing each other. Tonight's TCM classic was Make Way for Tomorrow, about an elderly couple who lost their home and had to rely on their children to take them in. None of the five grown children were willing or able to take them both in, so they were split up and lived with different children. The promise was that three months later, they'd be together in the home of another of their kids... but instead, they were separated even farther, after a lovely and romantic night on the town in the hotel where they'd spent their honeymoon fifty years earlier.
I cried and cried at the end of the movie, for a few reasons. Funny, my biggest worry as a kid was that our house would burn down and the five of us kids would be separated like the Waltons. Tonight's movie was a grownup version of that story... and it's just as scary. And now that my parents are getting on in years and fearing their own future, we are all in position to assess what can and should happen for them. They are taking charge of this process so far, which is so kind of them, and helpful. We are blessed beyond explanation that they have planned and thought about this situation much more than Scott and I have done about our own!
Which is my next reason for crying at the movie... it occurs to me that I never remember feeling fear like that I felt when I felt love for Scott and married him for life. I remember thinking that this lifetime commitment, til death us do part, meant just that- that death would part us, one way or another, eventually. How scary is that???
It's worthwhile, this life, I am willing to live with this fear and face this unknown future where ever it leads us. I pray we'll be together for as long as we can be. I pray the same for our parents.

A man and a maid stood hand in hand;
bound by a tiny wedding band.
Before them lay the uncertain years
that promised joy and, maybe tears.
"Is she afraid?" thought the man of the maid.

"Darling," he said in a tender voice,
"Tell me. Do you regret your choice?
'We know not where the road may wind,
'or what strange byways we may find.
'Are you afraid?" said the man to the maid.

She raised her eyes and spoke at last.
"My dear," she said, "the die is cast.
'The vows have been spoken. The rice has been thrown.
'Into the future we’ll travel alone.
'With you," said the maid, "I’m not afraid."

The only thing we have to fear, is...

I've been thinking a lot about fear lately. I don't remember feeling fear like I do now, before 9/11. A few nights after the attacks in NYC, a huge thunderstorm came in while we were sleeping, in the middle of the night. A huge thunder clap woke me from my sleep and my new instinct was fear- were we being bombed? Was this an attack? Were we at war? I don't ever remember thinking these things before that night, thunder or no.
I'm in the middle of a neat article in this month's downeast magazine, (sorry, the article doesn't seem to be online, but the magazine is great, check it out) about a woman who lives in NYC and summers in Maine. She talks about the difference in parenting styles between the two- specifically, the different types of fear that plague the two groups of parents. She tells a story of visiting a friend and witnessing a llama kick the woman's child in the chest, knocking him flat. The parents brushed him off and sent him on his way, and didn't even sue the llama's owner. In later conversation, she hears Maine parents deride Cheerios because they're "so full of sugar!!"
I guess we all have our fears, and what is paralyzingly scary to one person can seem trifling to another. I was telling my spiritual director the other day that along with the sadness and shock that came with the miscarriage, the other notable feeling I had immediately was the disappearance of FEAR. When I had looked ahead as a pregnant woman, I saw fear at every step. Soon after the 3 month mark, we were due to start testing for Down's, Spina bifida, who knows what else. And what about stillbirth? Would some scary man steal my toddler when I looked away for a fraction of a second? Would a dog bite her? Would she get Lyme disease? Would he die in a car accident? What about war? Etc.... etc.... etc.........etc...........etc.......................... Somehow, with the awfulness of the miscarriage, came the relief that, at least now I know how the story ends. It was like looking ahead at the last page of the book.
I guess everyone who goes ahead and has children is plagued with all those fears that I had, and yet, they do it, sometimes even more than once! Parents impress me for their bravery. Now, for me, the only fear that remains is the fear I'll get pregnant again.
I worry about a world so fearful. As I was walking today I passed a field that I would have happily plunged into as a kid- it was full of waist-high weeds and grasses and flowers and I would have tunneled in there and made a fort, decorated it with whatever I'd find in there... but today, kids can't do that without safety gear on, and a tick-check immediately afterward. I rarely see kids outside playing without their parents these days- so different than the world of my childhood. And in the Catholic Church, we are flat-out teaching kids to be afraid of all adults, even their parents and grandparents. What is this generation going to look like when they are adults? What kind of adults will they be, when they were taught all along that adults are people you have to keep yourself safe from, who are not allowed to touch you in any way, or speak to you in public, or be alone in an elevator with you? Are we making future adults who will be dangerous, because they think that's what adults are supposed to be?
Now there's something to be afraid of.