Friday, June 16, 2006

Can I panic now?

said Ron Weasley, confronted by several zillion appalling spiders in ( I think) the second Harry Potter film...
He was having to confront a phobia-gone-mad, out of all proportion to any likely reality.
I am currently reminding myself of that, as my wilder flights of maternal imagination threaten to overwhelm me.
DarlingDaughter (who should perhaps be renamed TeaThaim girl now, in deference to her travel blog?) left Thailand, and arrived in Hong Kong yesterday, a couple of days early, as she was desperate to see Yeti perform there (no, I don't know anything about them either). After all sorts of to-ing and fro-ing those nice people at LastMinute.com have promised full refund of the ticket she won't be using, and everything ought to be fine, except that the friends with whom she's staying don't return home to HK till Monday. Leaving L on her own in a city where she knows no-one for 4 days that show signs of feeling like years. I know she's sensible. I know she's learning and growing in every respect through this trip. But in the final analysis, I'm her mother and she's on the other side of the world with no support structure in place at all. A very perturbing text this morning didn't improve things, - though it turns out that it's not as scary in terms of L as it sounded at first. I'm just finding it rather difficult, really, and hoping that a squeaky blog post will help me to put the panic away while I try to write a sermon for evensong. Jeremiah and Romans. Perhaps I do need to panic after all!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Calm ... Calm ... Calm ...

All shall yet be well, I'm sure.

hencity said...

if she's as like you as I think she is... then she'll be fine. Mum's worry - it's part of the person profile you didn't know you received all those years ago. xxx

Anonymous said...

As Serena said, all shall be well and all shall be well... and this is NOT true "she's on the other side of the world with no support structure in place at all" - she has prayer, and a lot of it. NO OF COURSE that won't stop you panicing (when did it EVER stop me?) but I KNOW that your prayers and those of many others have been a lot more effective in keeping my daugther safe than some of the supposedly professional input she's had and I KNOW that prayer will help L too - so I'll sign off and get praying!
Will also get my little corner of the NHS to join in

Caroline said...

oh bother I don't know what to say or how to say it. I want to say something along the lines of there's no way of knowing whether she'll be 'fine' or not, hell, yes, anything in your imagination could potentially happen - life's like that an no amount of platitudes or words can take away the possibility that sometimes bad things happen. You know that more than most. but as you would tell me - whatever happens, god is in it somewhere - with Luci, with you and with everyone who loves her (and you).

sorry, that's not very helpful is it.

hug.

Unknown said...

Well, all I have to offer is this:
(((Kathryn)))

Cal said...

Hey there - if it's any help at all I lived in Hong Kong for years and it's the safest place I've ever known. I'd happily walk home on my own at 3 in the morning which is something I would never do either here in London or even in the countryside where I grew up.