It's Too Scary

He’s just barely 24 months, still trying to make sense of the life into which he’s been thrust. To date, he’s experienced few problems. He is a much wanted, only-child, born to mature parents. He’s enjoyed an abundance of the basics necessary for thriving, e.g., sufficient nourishing food, love and affection, he’s been kept warm, dry and safe, proper stimuli is continually introduced to spark his curiosity and increase his knowledge, when upset by unease or pain he has been comforted, routines have been established in order to provide a sense of predictable calm and safety, it has been emphasized to him that people who love or are otherwise concerned for his wellbeing will be nearby...

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When he was 20 months old, he and I took a neighborhood walk on a still-warm autumn day. He noticed the halloween decorations on a home two doors down. Although he’d been three steps ahead of me he turned back, arms extended crying, “Up! Up! Up!” I picked him up asking, “What’s going on? Did you see something?” He pointed to a display featuring a realistic-looking fluttering bat strung from a bush to hover just above a partial skeleton clawing its way out of the lawn. I chuckled, “It’s okay. They are just halloween decorations. Halloween is coming soon.” I edged slowly closer to the display, telling him the names of the items, bones, skeleton, bat. I laughed and did a feigned, soft “Eek.” Then I turned and started back toward his house. “More,” he said, “More eek.” I walked back and he took a better look, from the safety of my arms, which were beginning to tire, so again I turned away. More urgently he said, “More eek!” “Okay,” I said, “But, you’ll have to stand. You’re heavy and my arms are tired.” I put him down and he stood next to me, holding my hand and staring at the display.  “Look,” I said, bending down, “I can touch it. It’s just plastic,” as I put my hand on the skeleton’s bony finger. He reached out and touched it. “See it can’t bother us. It’s just a piece of plastic.” He looked some more, touched it again. “Let’s go home. It’s time for lunch.” “No! More eek,” he wailed. “Okay, one last look, then lunch. The ‘eeks’ will still be here tomorrow."

Thus began a month-long obsession with halloween decorations. Each day I was with him, he begged to go “outside,” and “see ‘eeks’," which were multiplying rapidly as October 31 neared. The scarier the display the longer he’d stare, transfixed. His parents reported the same. “People must think I’m crazy for taking my baby to look at these frightful sights,” sighed his mother, "but he begs to see them." Somehow the process of facing "IT" and staring it down, inured him to his initial fear.

Reliable Husband and I took him this week to Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. He knew from books about the fish and mammals we’d view. “What will we see?” I asked on the commute. “Dolphins and fish.” “What else?” “Sharks and turtles.” “What else?” “Seahorses and eeky stingrays.” Eeky had become his adjective for anything strange or scary.

The first display we saw featured stingrays. He stood staring, then said, “Up! Pick me up!” then, “No more aquarium!” Picking him up I assured him, “It’s okay, let's go to the toddler’s play area. You’ll like that.” Along the way I talked about the fish, sharks, turtles and seahorses. I demonstrated that they were all safely housed behind thick glass. He tapped the glass to test it. "They can’t come out of the water where they live. They can’t survive in our atmosphere,” I explained waving at the air around us.

He enjoyed the play area. On the way out, we noticed the trainers were feeding the beluga whales. The mammals slid up on the faux rocks to receive their fish treats, but their sheer size, as well as their snorts and vocalizations frightened him. “Too scary!” he whimpered, burying his head in my neck. We headed to the dining room for a snack. Relaxed, hunger and thirst abated, I told him we were going home. “No! Please more ‘eeky’ stingrays!" "More dolphins. More sharks!” He was ready again to face his demons.

That night he had his first nightmare. His parents reported that in the wee hours they woke to his wailing from his crib. He cried over and over, “Nooo! Nooo!” As they comforted him, his wail lessened to a soft mourn, “nooo” as he fell back asleep in their arms.

Later that day he woke from his nap. I heard him talking, as he often does, upon waking in his crib. Usually it’s happy banter. But he was repeating a phrase, almost like a mantra: “B**** likes whales. B**** likes whales...” Referring to himself, B****, in the third person. Okay, you might not quite have overcome your fear yet, I thought.

Like most humans he trusts - yet he worries. I do as well. Eleanor Roosevelt said, 

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it… every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Currently, I face our whacked-out Republican Party. The other night Reliable Husband listened to the streamed online Republican debate with his headphones, while I read a book. He knows that it upsets me to hear those buffoons pontificate. As I read, I heard Reliable Husband chuckle now and then. Soon his snickering stopped. Humor one might initially find in their quibbling and caviling evolves into shock at their juvenile, bombastic outbursts.

I pulled up a photo of the debaters. I looked squarely at them. They don’t look too “eeky.” They look like regular humans. But, oh they scare me. 

Like B****’s mother, I wonder, Is anyone watching and wondering? But, I know the world is watching us, here in the U.S. as we descend into the depravity that has come to be associated with our presidential elections. 

I know that the Republicans are becoming plasticized and can soon no longer hurt me. Stultified by their own hatred, they will soon no longer be able to survive in our modern atmosphere- yet I worry. I trust my sensible fellow Americans, yet I worry.

Reliable Husband hears me wail, “NOOO!" in the wee hours, and turns to find me curled in a fetal position, moaning, referring to myself in the third person and repeating in monotone, “Rae likes Trump, Rae likes Trump… "

Standing, bravely staring down his fear

Just Too Scary! EEK!

The world is watching.