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I was in the Cleveland airport when it hit me — I was a Jewish Mother.

A snow storm delayed our flight home so I decided to take advantage of the time to warn my then-4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about the dangers of walking on a frozen lake.

My sudden urge was inspired by a newspaper article about several children whose lives ended tragically at the bottom of an ice-covered lake. It was a warning my mother had often given me without explaining why you couldn't just climb out the same hole you fell through. My frozen lake discourse included all the gory details of hypothermia, saturated clothes, water currents and finally the inevitable, drowning.

Behind me a young woman, eavesdropping on my water-safety lecture, giggled.

In a flash all the articles my mother has ever sent me flooded my mind. Tales about botulism, carbon monoxide poisoning, cars turning themselves on and running people over, and cancer caused by any number of occult agents.

"I never intended to be this kind of mother," I told the stranger behind me. But my own mother's words echoed in my head: "You'll understand when you're a mother."

And I did. In the Jewish Mother mentality, every catastrophe is personal. The newspaper becomes a midrash, with endless stories illustrating why it's dangerous to skateboard while listening to a Walkman, eat unwrapped candy or walk on frozen lakes.

I started worrying about my daughter driving a car before she could walk. I signed both children up for swimming lessons before they were 2. When my daughter was an infant I found a toothpick sticking straight up in the carpet. I lost a whole night's sleep imagining what injuries that could have inflicted. I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to stuff safety plugs in outlets, install latches in cupboard doors and put medication on shelves so high my husband and I needed a chair to reach them.

My ability to worry about the unseen, unknown and undiagnosed is boundless.

My friend Nina says it's historic memory from our days in the shtetl when life was arbitrary. Bad things happened all the time — military raids, conscription, plagues, anti-Semitism and a lot of bugs. There was a lot to worry about then.

Why should that affect me? If my family ever actually lived in a shtetl, no one has complained about it in the past 48-1/2 years.

Maybe it's genetic, like eye color or the newly discovered "priest" gene? A dormant gene that pregnancy activates. Like the varicose vein gene.

It's the awfulizing gene. The one that makes it impossible to say a good thing about your family without a kin ahora chaser. Even good things mean you have to worry about the inevitable bad that will follow to balance it out. It's what keeps Jewish mothers waiting in the car at the curb until they see their passenger enter their house safely, whether that passenger is 5 or 55.

Nothing is too small or insignificant. I've driven across town to deliver lunches, stuffed animals and jackets before my children even realized they had been forgotten. A friend told me she paged her Paris-bound daughter at the airport to tell her she forgot her toothbrush. I understand that. They may not sell toothbrushes in France. And how would that mother have felt if the plane crashed and she had neglected to call her daughter?

If worrying is the mark of a Jewish mother, then I'm a great one. My mother was even better. Our family used to say she'd chew her children's food if we had let her.

That's something else I now understand. It has nothing to do with food. She just wanted to protect my sister and me from the insults, pain, dangers and inconveniences of the world. She did our laundry, made our beds and bought our underwear. She cried when I didn't get elected president of my high school's Girls' Gym Club. When I sprained my ankle, she limped. And when I went on a diet, she ate for two.

But I'm not the same Jewish mother as my mother. I've bought crickets for my son's pet tarantula, let my 16-year-old daughter have a coed sleepover and took in a stray dog. I've even stood by and watched my children stumble, fall and even fail because I know it's important to let them do that.

I never use guilt to manipulate my children. Occasionally, after an argument, I've said, "It's your decision. I know you'll do the right thing." Only once when my daughter was at her adolescent worst, did I say, "You'll be sorry when I'm gone." She smiled, said, "Probably not".

I don't use food as a love barometer although I do cook twice as much as a family of four could eat in one sitting, but no one is overweight except the stray dog. She gained 18 pounds last year.

I have fixed our automatic garage door opener, unclogged several toilets and replaced the hard drive in my computer. I can even change a light bulb, but with two males in the house, I don't have to.

The other night my husband told me about an article he read in the paper about a boy who accidentally ran his mother over. The sun was in the son's eyes and he didn't see her.

"Maybe you should tell Sammy that story," I said. We only have another year and a half to finish preparing Sammy for all the dangers of driving.