Are We There Yet? Her mother's intuition has skipped a generation Lori Clinch   My mother has always had a knack for knowing when things weren't right with her loved ones. She can be totally engaged in a project, engrossed in a TV show or at lunch with friends and suddenly she'll get a look as if the "forces that be" had just tapped her on the shoulder. Sometimes she'll just stop dead in her tracks and look from left to right. She'll tilt her head ever so slightly, sniff the air and say, "Something's wrong, I can feel it. Go and call your sister." Whether one of her loved ones has scabbed a knee, or another was sitting in the emergency room waiting to hear if the stomach ache will require an appendectomy, it can't be kept from Mom. Her sixth sense clues her in long before we do. Take last week's baseball game for instance. Since my intuition is not fine-tuned, I sat in the stands and felt that all was right in the universe as I watched a little guy knock the ball into the outfield, bringing three of his teammates home. My husband and two of our boys were sidled in on the bench beside me. As my Little Charlie went up to bat, his older brothers were sitting in the stands and fighting over who got to drink his Gatorade. All of the Clinch clan was in attendance except for Vernon, our eldest and wise-cracking child. Although Vernon should have been there, I didn't panic. We've all become accustomed to Vernon's absences. It's not that we don't miss his happy and smiling face. It's just that since he graduated from high school, he's gone to great lengths to prepare himself for leaving the nest. And although my mother would have sniffed the air and had known that something was amiss, I never really pondered his absence until he called me on my cell phone. "So, Mom," he started out as if we were about to spend the next few minutes shooting the breeze, "like, if I'm sitting at a stop sign, and if another car hits another car and it, like, spins around and hits my pickup, so, like, what do I do then?" Talk about a reason to choke on your popcorn. For a minute I could barely catch my breath. My mind was reeling as I tried to take in what he just said. Although my mother would have anticipated the phone call long before its arrival, I sat there with my lack of intuitiveness and felt as if someone had slapped me on the back. Meanwhile, Vernon was so calm that you would have thought he was calling me to get an opinion on cheese. "Are you OK?" I asked as I came out of my seat. "Yeah, I didn't get hurt or anything." "Thank God." We talked about everything that he should do. I told him I loved him, asked him 10 more times if he was OK, offered up a prayer of thanks and hung up the phone. My mind was racing as I wondered how a mother could just sit at a game and remain oblivious to the fact that her child was off getting himself in a car accident. Not more than 30 seconds had passed when the phone rang again. I have to say that I wasn't too surprised when I looked at the caller ID and saw that it was my mother. "Are you OK?" she asked, and as I heard the stress in her voice, I thought to myself that she really should take her show on the road. "Yes, everything is fine," I responded. I could have simply told her what she already knew, but I chose to feel her out. "Is something going on?" she asked, "Well," I said, trying to play it down, "Little Charlie's on third." "Nonsense," she said with frustration. "Something's wrong. I can feel it. Where's Vernon?" There isn't a mother alive who wouldn't love to have intuition like that, so I've been tilting my head to the left and sniffing the air all week as I tried to duplicate what my mother can do. Although I haven't picked up any signals, so far I have received two very distinct feelings - a runny nose and a stiff neck. Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch.com.