Fear in Many Forms

My in-laws live in rural Florida. I love everything about their warm and welcoming home except the location of their washer and dryer. It’s in a room that can only be accessed outside through the carport. Changing out the laundry after dark involves walking forty or so feet from the door of the house to the washer and dryer. From the earliest days of washing clothes at their house, these forty feet have terrified me. Did I mention it’s rural? So many horror movie scenes have played out in my imagination within those forty feet. Even when I successfully make it to the washer without being murdered (clearly, every time), I still have to contend with varieties of large Florida insect life. 

My own Florida upbringing also involved large bugs but of the suburban, and slightly less terrifying, variety. I spent countless days swimming in the pool in the backyard and if I ever found myself in the pool by myself, even if a friend or family member was nearby in the yard, images of sharks would immediately come to mind. I would have to kick ferociously to get to the side and then act nonchalant about it, like maybe I was just timing how fast I could make it to the side of the pool. Continuing to swim, while imaging sharks underneath me, albeit in a small, self-contained, chlorinated body of water, was intolerable. 

This thread of irrational fear has always been there. I hated to flush the toilet as a kid, until it was way too late to be cute or accepted as a little kid idiosyncrasy. Every night before bed I would line the perimeter of bed with all my stuffed animals, creating a fortress against all means of nighttime boogiemen. Also intolerable was standing anywhere near the dark chasm that is the underbelly of a bed. Running leaps were the only acceptable form of entering and exiting beds. More recently, I have been known to cover my eyes when the spooky Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial comes on at Halloween-time. You know, just in case. 

Why do I share all of this? Well, I am outing myself as a scaredy-cat. I am a BIG baby when it comes to all things remotely creepy. But, I can count on one hand the number of times I have felt really unsafe in San Francisco. I feel a lot more heart-racing heebeegeebees changing out the laundry in rural Florida than I do walking down most SF streets in the dark. 

A common theme connecting some of these times of feeling unsafe is that Dave has been out of town. He was out of town the first time I was awoken by an earthquake. He was out of town the second time I was awoken by an earthquake. And he was out of town the time a man was asleep in my minivan. 

Yes, you read that correctly. A man. In my van. 

It was early one morning a few years ago when I was teaching at the school my girls attended. Running late, I yelled over my shoulder for my girls to meet me at the car as I waddled down the stairs with my armload of bags. Travel coffee cup clutched awkwardly in one hand and keys fumbling in the other, I reached for the van door handle just as my girls came outside. 

The next several seconds compressed into one awful moment. My brain and body could not compute. Man. In my car. Scream. Drop bags. Slam door. Yell at girls to go inside. Grab bags. Run-waddle up the stairs. Shudder. Lock the door. Pace wildly. Shudder some more. Breathe.

The good news was that I think I scared him as much as he scared me. (The bad news, in case it isn’t obvious, is that there was a strange man in my car.) I watched from the upstairs window as he scrambled to get out of the car, stumbling from surprise and sleepiness and possibly the effects of some unknown substance. I was already on the phone with the non-emergency police line (though it did feel very much like an emergency, to be clear) just in case he wasn’t planning to evacuate the car. The operator was soothing and reassuring and also surprisingly nonplussed by the whole thing, like maybe she had just fielded a call about the very same thing. I, on the other hand, was very much “plussed” by the whole thing.

At that moment, I just wanted to call it a day. Just scratch the whole day and hide in the bathtub or escape into the pages of a novel. It just feels like too much to face a whole 12+ more hours of being a functional human when an adrenaline surge has caused your heart rate to double before 8am. But I still had a job to get to and, more importantly, two young girls who were staring in bewilderment at the one adult who could cue them how to respond to this wild turn of events.

 

So I did what is required of responsible adults who are also employees and moms and, after we hugged and swapped “That was so crazy” remarks, I forced a strained smile and a much calmer exterior than I felt, and we got back into the car and went to work and school. The 20-minute ride was an exercise in keeping myself from going over the edge emotionally, blinking back tears and forcing myself to stay in the present.  This was mostly accomplished by talking about the event as if we had read about it in a chapter book. We speculated about what might have led him to fall asleep in our car: the door was accidentally left unlocked, it was unseasonably cold, he was just really tired, etc. The wet, winter wind blasted us through the open windows, purging the car of the smell of a strange man, a strange man who probably had not showered recently. And this led us to wondering what it might be like to not have a regular place to sleep or take showers. As I shoved the detritus of his evening in the car, an empty Mountain Dew bottle and several unidentifiable wrappers, further under the seat with my foot, I shoved the fear and general ickiness of feeling violated down with it. Keep it together, Maggie.

We were afraid and that was okay. We could also have compassion in the midst of our fear. And these things could exist together. 

If I’m honest, fear has been a frequent visitor in my life in San Francisco. Perhaps not fear that makes me want to have pepper spray on my keychain or religiously lock my doors, but a fear that makes me want to believe that the risks are too great. That it’s not worth it.  That it’s all too hard. And you know, some days it just is too hard. 

But then you have a wild, and sort of funny, story to tell and when you retell it you remember all the ways God showed up in your fear and gave you the grace to keep going. But you determine not to retell this wild story in the presence of your mother-in-law who would not think it funny in any way. (Sorry if you are reading this, Carol).