Mom said I was always anxious for the first days of school. I would have a stomach ache. I would wake up with a stomach ache for the first couple of days of school, and it would get a little better each day until I was more confident.
Mom tells this story about the kids fighting in the morning and mom was spanking us. Eventually mom realized she didn’t want to spank us anymore and sat down on the stairs and started crying. I sat down next to her and said, “It’s okay mom. Everything is going to be okay mom.”
Mom said I have always been more sensitive in that way and she felt like I was taking on some of the responsibility of taking care of her. She wondered if some of the reason I picked up on things quickly as a kid was that I didn’t want to let her down.