Togetherness Anxiety

When my baby wails because I leave the room for five seconds, then beams with delight when I reappear, my first thought is, "How little you know me."

For a few seconds, I also feel like a goddess of some sort, I must admit.

It's a confusing welter of emotions: disbelief, delight, a vague sense of power, and a more acute sense of horror.

The horror comes with the realization of who I really am: not some goddess, but a horribly flawed individual that doesn't deserve such adoration.

I know that what he's experiencing has a clinical name: separation anxiety. And that it's a phase almost all babies go through, which will soon pass. And certainly, by the time he's sixteen he'll pretend he doesn't know me when I surprise him in the hallway at his school.

Nevertheless, I can't help but feel nervous about the intensity of his need for me at this phase of his life.

Call it "togetherness anxiety."