This year, I kicked into holiday overdrive right after Thanksgiving—buying gifts, baking cookies, organizing the craft fair at my daughter’s school—all of which, in addition to the usual grind, had me running around like an elf on NoDoz from dawn to dark.

And then, as if on cue, the night we were to host my extended family for a big holiday dinner, I was overcome with what I’d soon learn was strep throat. As I stumbled off to bed, I put a chicken in the oven, set the table, and laid out my three-year-old daughter’s holiday dress.

Then I trudged upstairs, downed some Advil, and commenced fretting. Would the chicken burn? Would the embroidery thread I’d used to tie its legs catch fire and torch the house? Or, would the bird be underdone, infesting my beloved family with deadly salmonella? The possibilities for worry were endless.

I knew my husband, Michael, was downstairs working while our kids napped, so I called his cell.

“I’m really sick,” I said. “Can you take over the dinner?”

He listened as I ticked off my symptoms and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of everything.”

"I’m really sick," I said. He promised he’d take care of everything, but I only half-believed him.

A few minutes later, I called him back and said, “You have to go next door and borrow a meat thermometer. When the chicken gets to 175 degrees, take it out.”

“OK,” he said. “Now get some rest.”

I dozed fitfully and woke when he came upstairs. Peeking from under the sheets, I asked, “How’s the chicken?”

“It’s fine,” he snapped. “Could you please stop worrying?”

But I couldn’t. I am the Worrier-in-Chief of our family, a role I relish even as I chafe against it. I see my anxiety as a safety net without which our family boat would surely sink.

You could chalk my obsessive tendencies up to my parents divorcing when I was six. When the figurative roof of your house caves in, one way of coping is to get out the Pledge and start dusting. The truth is I’ve been cleaning, organizing, and making to-do lists for as long as I can remember, all in a thinly veiled ploy to keep things not just OK, but damn near perfect. I suppose my overconcern is an attempt to make up for whatever was lost so long ago. But what if all my worries were removed from the equation? What would happen then?

Michael emerged from his shower, and, my throat aflame, I croaked, “How’s the chicken?”

He stared at me in that way people do when they understand something about you that you haven’t figured out yourself. Then he spat, “You have to let go of the chicken.”

Half an hour later, my fever spiking at 103, I did. By then, the dinner was underway, and I could hear the clinking of silverware and laughter downstairs. As I fell into a woozy slumber, I heard my step-mother shout, “This chicken is delicious!”

A couple days later, while Michael and the kids were sledding, I got up to do some laundry and pulled our daughter Jessie’s holiday dress from the pile of dirty clothes. I’d just bought it a few weeks before, and, as I was turning it inside out to wash, I found the matching bloomers still pinned to the inner lining. Jessie had spent the evening in a dress with the bloomers still attached at the hip, and no one had noticed or cared.

Maybe a good-enough mother is all they really need.

I realized that life had unfurled in all its chaotic glory without my worry to buoy us—and everything had turned out just fine. Maybe it was time for me to make a psychic shift. Maybe Michael was right: I needed to let go of the chicken.

“You know what?” I said, sitting up. “I’m half-way better today. I can’t hug you yet,” I said, reaching out to tousle his hair, “but I can pat you on the head.”

I thought he’d be disappointed, and I felt a stab of guilt for letting him—and everyone else—down. But he smiled wide and leapt from the room. As he raced down the stairs, I heard him yell, “Jessie! Medium news! Mama is half-way better. She can pat you on the head now!”

And judging from their laughter as they tumbled into the room for pats on their heads from their half-better mother, maybe this year medium news is good enough.

Katherine Ozment is a Glam Family contributing editor and a freelance writer working on her first book. Her essays about motherhood have been widely published and can be found at katherineozment.com. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two kids.