Maalox Much?

It’s Finals Week for The Teens, and I may not survive to tell you about it in its entirety. Hence this post at finals’ beginning, lest I am in my grave by the week’s end.

I don’t know exactly why, but Finals Week is evoking unsettling feelings in me. Feelings that I don’t care for. Feelings that are not my friends. Feelings with names like Anxiety. Panic. Terror. I could be a guest for a Dr. Phil episode: “Mothers Without Boundaries.” Shall I Freud a little and excavate my past? I was a good, conscientious Honor Roll student in high school, but the pressure to perform perfectly in my family was so great that I developed an ulcer in junior high. Not fun. Chugging down the Maalox while memorizing the Periodic Table.

Then there’s Rock Star, my freshman. These are his first finals. And he just doesn’t care. He’s as laid-back as a dental chair. So I have to care for him and micromanage his studying, while being careful not to turn into my own Control Freak Mother. I try to tread gently. “Honey, maybe you should start studying now? Turn off the X-Box and crack open a book?? Just a thought, baby.” I fed him mega-grams of protein for breakfast to try to jump-start his brain: A two-egg cheese omelet, half a sausage pizza and a handful of cashews. Plus a protein-boost water bottle. Is that overkill?? And this afternoon, God help me, after asking once....no, twice....no, three times if he had all the study guides he needed for his English Lit. final tomorrow (in which he answered, yes, yes, a thousand yeses) he realized at 3:30 that he didn’t have all the study guides he needed for his English Lit. final tomorrow. Ahhhhh!!!! So, in a stunt worthy of The Amazing Race, Butterfly drove him back over to school where he ran through the hall, leaped over two garbage cans in a single bound and slid into his locker, madly turning the lock and tearing through papers until he found the study guides he needed just before school closed for the day.

So while my teens are studying, I am trying to channel my anxiety into positive energy. I am working-out like Jane Fonda on Dexedrine. And organizing drawers and closets. And feeding my kids more protein. But I’m starting to feel a gnawing in the lining of my stomach again. Hmmmm……..