I hated that she was the only mother who panicked. “Come on,” I’d say. “There were still lots of people on the street!”

Growing up, a chorus of “watch how you cross” and “call me when you get there” followed me like a tail whenever I left the house. My mother wasn’t a helicopter mom per se, but she definitely worried about us a lot. My sisters and I often got together with friends on Friday night. If one of us wound up in deep conversation and missed the midnight mark, we knew we’d find my mother on the porch, scanning the streets, frantic.

I hated that she was the only mother who panicked. “Come on,” I’d say. “There were still lots of people on the street!”

I remember the times my sisters and I went to the Bais Yaakov and Machon plays and returned home late. Although my mother had been in bed for a couple of hours by that point, a croak of “good night” could always be heard from the master bedroom. We’d exchange knowing glances. She never slept peacefully until every last one of her teenagers were slumbering.

Study sessions with friends was another parshah. Pre “every-teenager-owns-a-cell phone” days, during midterms and finals, my friends all knew who was calling when our sessions were interrupted by the phone. The singsong caller ID would announce… drumroll… Roizy Home. It was always better when the studying took place at my house, under my mother’s watchful gaze. Well, it wasn’t exactly under her gaze, but it was literally under her, in the basement two flights down.

Now that I think about it, I may have just had a group of friends with super chilled moms, because when my friends finally left our basement vasikin time, nobody had called frantically looking for them.