The grocery store could have given me a little warning.
Maybe I should have paid attention to the pumpkins and mums outside. Or used common sense to know that it is Fall, even if it’s still one thousand degrees and humid outside. It didn’t occur to me that our normal trip to Kroger turn into a trip of terror for my toddler.
We made it as far as the grocery carts, when he began to shriek, cry, and rapidly crawl UP MY FACE. Terror.
What in the world was wrong?
The Halloween display. A gigantic display of ghoulish masks and ghosts. Real cute, Kroger.
There we stood, in the entrance to the grocery store. Me, thinking through the few things we did in fact HAVE to buy. Him, shaking with fear and crying on my shoulder, refusing to sit in the cart. For a million minutes we stood in the entrance, while I glared at anyone who seemed annoyed at the little parenting moment I was having right there.
I thought about hopping back in the car and trying this again another time. I thought about begging the check-out girl to run and get me some milk and dog food. Then, I had a moment of Mom clarity and realized this is one of those moments where I had to change the story and let my child know that fear was not bigger than him.
He finally made it back into the shopping cart. (There may have been fruit snacks involved.) We used a little self-talk and dramatic play throughout the entire produce section. (The smiles from the grandmas made me less determined to hunt down the man who “huffed” at me.) We practiced this little narration every time we saw anything orange and black or Halloween-ish:
Mama: Halloween’s not scary, it’s silly! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Logan: Ha’ween not scary, silly! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Mama: I’m not scared, I’m brave! (Big muscle arms up)
Logan: I not scared, I brave! (Big muscle arms up, grunt)
But when we rounded the corner for the Halloween aisle, he began to scream. I decided we could avoid this for the next six weeks or run head-on. Since I’m in a head-on kind of place these days, I prepped him.
Okay, baby, we’re going to run down the aisle. You tell that Halloween stuff, “I’m brave!”
So, there we were. The paper towel shelves merged into a gigantic array of masks and jack-o-lanterns and candy. And ghoulish, stupid ghosts. Full cart and all, my son and I held up our big muscle arms and ran down the aisle, yelling, “I not scared, I brave!”
He was a champ.
I don’t know if we conquered our fear, but we sure enough ran straight through an aisle full of it.
By the time we got home, I was pretty proud of both of us. . .until I realized that I hadn’t played outside in the backyard with him in a week. . .because of a snake. A long, slithering, creeps me out, cannot-deal-with-it SNAKE.
My husband had one response to it: Hack up the entire row of hedges by the house. He has always kept his promise to slay the dragons for me. This time, the dragon was a bush. He saw the snake, got the appropriate tools to remove the snake (a rake, an ax, hedge clippers and a hacksaw) and perfectly mutilated the bushes. The trouble is, he didn’t actually capture the snake.
I had to convince myself that the snake has slithered away to Florida (if not, I’d have to move). But still, I have avoided the backyard. It doesn’t matter that the snake could have been found in the driveway or the front yard. It doesn’t matter that the snake could have been there, unseen by us, any old time we were playing in that space. I had a hard time seeing the backyard as a safe place after this terrifying thing had entered it.
Then I realized I had just made my baby yell about being brave in the middle of a grocery store, so maybe I could stop being ridiculous and go play in the backyard.
I texted my siblings (because why should they miss out on a chance to make fun of me?) and Brother took the opportunity to remind me of deep truths, with this text:
“And Thou shalt fear the serpent no more. For Simon Jake hath hacked up thine shrubbery to secure thy safety. That’s in the Bible. In my version.”
Yeah, afraid not, Brother. But there’s something like the Good News in that. I was terrified, but not alone. And love makes us do ridiculous things. Like hacking up a bush or running head first into the aisle of scary things. It sounds a lot like one of my favorite songs, from one of my favorite verses that IS in the Bible:
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2)
This truth has helped me story my circumstances many times before, with fears bigger than snakes or masks. There’s a lot of power in changing the narrative, and shaping our story with truth. May Benatar says “To construct a story of our lives is to make meaning of it. To compose memory, emotion and internal experience as well as autobiographical facts into a story helps us become who we are.”
Deep waters, flames, and fears have come before. They will probably come again. But the narrative I want my child to have, and the narrative I hope to voice continually for myself and for my family is this: Fear doesn’t win. We are strong. And just in case we’re not brave enough, we will be brave for each other.
So well written. What a great life lesson for your child and for all of us.