“I need a plot! What if I die?” This is the text I received the other night from my 13-year-old son, Levi. Getting a text from your son when he’s sitting across the table from you is a sure sign that you’ve entered (cue weird Twilight Zone music) … the teenage years. We were enjoying some post-repast conversation at my mom’s house. One of the guests, a longtime family friend, works at a Jewish cemetery in town. The discourse had shifted to her work, and she was astounding us with stories about elderly people who simply refused to contemplate death, funerals and anything associated with burials. My brother-in-law, an uber-responsible physician, chimes in, “It’s just idiotic not to take care of these things ahead of time. Idiotic and irresponsible.”
Suddenly I look across the table and see Levi, his head in his hands, destined for an anxiety attack. “Why don’t you go play with your cousins,” I suggest. “No, mom. I want to stay with the adults,” he insists. “Well, are you sure you can handle this conversation?” I ask gently. “Yes,” he replies, “I’m sure. But mom, how much is a plot? Because I need to save up and get one.”
Conversation halts and everyone looks at Levi. Several of the adults start to roar with laughter.
“Levi,” I try to explain, “You really don’t need to worry about that right now.”
“But I’m going to die,” he matter-of-factly refutes. “I don’t want to be stupid, or irresponsible.”
Suddenly I am transported into the celluloid world of my all-time favorite Woody Allen movie, “Annie Hall.” I morph into Alvy Singer’s kvetching Jewish mother and insist my 9-year-old son, Alvy, tell the psychiatrist why he is so depressed.
Alvy’s mother: Tell the doctor why you’re depressed, Alvy. It’s something that he read.
Alvy: The universe is expanding.
Doctor: The universe is expanding?
Alvy: Well, the universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything.
Alvy’s mother: He stopped doing his homework.
Alvy: What’s the point?
Alvy’s mother: What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding!”
Doctor: It won’t be expanding for billions of years, Alvy. And we’ve gotta try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here.
Why is it that some kids burden themselves with thoughts like these while others are content to race madly through the house immersed in a game of hide-and-seek? I so want to be one of those carefree people who raises easy, playful youngsters who throw spitballs into the unsuspecting heads of classmates and giggle gleefully when the teacher accidentally strings together words like “under” and “where.”
But alas, that’s just not who we are.
I actually remember my first 100% sleepless night. I was about my son’s age and was convinced that the angel of death was coming that very night to take me away. My poor father tried everything to get me to go to sleep. Finally, with a tear in his eye, he implored, “Please, Debbie, just close your eyes. I’ll stand guard all night, and I promise not to open the door if he comes. Just go to sleep!”
I guess the sad thing here is that this whole experience just confirms what I’ve known all along: children really are just mirrors showcasing every flaw, fault and foible of our own misguided psyches. Genetics, my friends, is inescapable. It’s all kind of depressing. In fact, sometimes I find it so disheartening that I relate completely to Annie Hall’s brother, Duane (played eerily by a young Christopher Walken), who behind the wheel of his automobile, confesses to Alvy while speeding down a darkened freeway late at night, “Sometimes I have a sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into an oncoming car. I anticipate the explosion, the sound of shattering glass, the … flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.”
Alvy is stumped for a reply but spits out, “Right,” just as they pull to a stop, “Well, I have to – I have to go now, Duane, because I’m due back on the planet Earth.”
Sometimes it sucks to be me. I desperately want to see myself as Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or Meryl Streep in “Out of Africa.” But no matter how hard I try, my true alter ego won’t let me forget that I’m really just a female version of a Jewish, neurotic, anxiety-ridden Alvy Singer.
Debra Rich Gettleman is a mother and blogger based in the Phoenix area. For more of her work, visit unmotherlyinsights.com.
