Paranoia: mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions.

In my mother's old(er) age, she's becoming more and more paranoid. Not the normal paranoias like "my children are going to end up in prison" or "someone's going to eat the 7-lb bag of M&M's I have stashed in the guest room." Don't get me wrong, she's paranoid about those things too, but those aren't the ones I'm referring to. I'm talking about the paranoia that, while white-water rafting, she'll be thrown from the raft and drown; that the rushing water will envelop her and never let her go. I'm sure you're thinking this is an understandable paranoia...and I agree. Raging waters have always been frightening, and I'm not talking about the water park near Salt Lake. However, to truly picture the degree this has reached, allow me to continue (oh wait, you don't have a choice).

One can always tell when my mom is thinking about death by water because she'll jump. I'm not talking both feet off the ground, vertical leap jump. I'm talking about whole body shudder jump. In fact, I imagine she's exhibited a few of those just reading this. But wait, there's more! My family has been thinking about taking a trip to Africa. One of the options on this trip involved rafting in an alligator infested river. We didn't choose the river specifically for that, but it doesn't matter, all of the rivers in Africa are alligator infested...so I imagine. My family was talking about this trip one day and my mom reached up and accidentally knocked her glasses off her head or the table or...any number of things glasses can be knocked from. My mom reached down to pick them up and...jumped. She was imagining reaching into the river when suddenly an imaginary alligator swam up and bit off her arm. So my mother, one-armed and unable to see, refused to participate in anything that involved both the untamable thing called water and man-eating animals.

Just recently I learned that after the bridge collapsed in Minnesota, my mom thinks about it everytime she crosses a bridge. While driving over a bridge, she imagines herself tumbling helplessly into the roiling and frothing maw of the river below until she happily drives onto solid land on the other side.

The great thing about my mom is that none of these paranoias seem to stop her, either from acquiring more children, buying 7-lb bags of M&M's, driving over bridges, or continuing to have adventures and, despite what she says, actually enjoying them. That's not going to stop my brother, John, and I from saving up our money for a new addition to the house, though. It will be located underground; surrounded by lead, cement, and packed dirt; and come equipped with enough supplies to last over a month, a battery-powered radio, and potassium iodide tablets.