Yesterday Henry developed a sudden irrational fear of black fuzzy things. It all started when our fabulous neighbor Allison came over wearing Groucho Marx glasses. Henry started to scream as soon as he saw her. It took him a long time to settle down and he kept staring at the pocket she’d put them in. She dropped them in the hallway, and after Henry settled down he tugged on Allison’s hand to show her something in another room. He saw the glasses/moustache set on the ground and started to scream again. He turned and came running back to me, terrified.”It’s ok sweetie!” I said, holding him. A while later, he saw my big black furry coat hanging on the banister. He stared at it and backed against the wall, growling. “Does that look like a bear?” I asked him. He looked at me and held his arms out, clinging to me, quickly looking over his shoulder at the black fuzzy thing. He grew so scared of my coat hanging there I had to move it to a different closet and shut the door. Now, I have an irrational fear of that closet. Not because my coat is scary (it’s not–it’s tres-glam!), but because it’s a big long cedar closet that goes far back in the recesses of this old mansion. You walk back beyond the coats and there’s a turn to take to get to the very back–a perfect hiding place for the most terrifying things imaginable.
So I don’t ever go in there.
George humors me (reluctantly) and handles anything going on in the closet.(Pulling out our holiday decor, etc.)
George has a completely irrational fear of any small ailment the kids might have, so I humor him (reluctantly) when he walks around like a grumpy zombie for days because on of the kids has a cough and he can’t shake his fear of bad things happening. He gets completely cuckoo.
And so I guess that’s a side effect of family– we all humor the crazy fears of each other.
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I’ve written before how death and divorce can make holidays especially piercing, seeing everyone with their loved ones when so many of mine are now gone.
This is the first Easter in 6 years that didn’t feel like I was being stabbed with 1,000 tiny pins all day long.
I wondered why the feelings changed. Was it time? People love to say, “time heals all wounds,” but I have not found that to be true for me. In my experience, some wounds never heal.I miss my beloveds all day every day. The pain remains, as big and all-consuming as ever, but the more it tries to pull me down, to destroy me, the more ferociously I create: writing, dancing, filming, creating…
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