Bound by Fear

Photo by Hawkins via FlickrMy father taught me fear. Don't take risks, don't take chances, don't dream dreams or trust others.

Just fear.

I didn't recognize it when I was a child. I was told that if I was found riding my bike on the road, it would be locked up forever. Living on a rural piece of property with no good riding land, I never rode my bike. I wasn't allowed to spend the night with friends, go on dates, take walks. I wasn't allowed to have poor friends, black friends, hispanic friends, friends in the duplexes, friends whose parents were divorced. This was protection. This was love.

Every morning, my dad would relate tales of horror from the day's radio news. Dead children. Ghastly accidents.

"Did you hear about that poor baby..?"

"Did you hear about that guy at the factory...?"

It was as if, by speaking them, he exorcised them from his mind, abolished them to my brain instead. 

This fear branded me, instilled in me an unhealthy obsession with freak accidents. It was only a matter of time, I thought, before I would be doing something routine, changing a tire, taking a shower, and, BAM, it would all be over. To this day, if one of my children goes overseas, or to the neighbor's house, if they are jumping on the bed or jumping on the trampoline, if they are climbing ladders or climbing trees, he's there, in my mind and in the moment, fretting, warning, issuing caution.

I was cutting potatoes when my youngest daughter flew into the kitchen, her pink My Little Pony held firmly in her grip.

"Can I cut potatoes?" she asked, grabbing one of the wet, earthy things from the giant silver bowl. My first reaction was to tell her no. I'm busy. I want to get this done quickly. I don't have the time. 

And then, before I could answer, I heard my father's voice behind me.

"No, no, no. You'll cut yourself."

My grandmother, my father's mom, when she was alive, had placed a potato in my preteen hand, long after I should have learned, showed me how to pull the sharp knife toward my thumb, meeting the blade with the pad of my thumbprint. She taught me to work the knife, to turn the vegetable, so that a long, unbroken length of brown would fall to the counter. 

My husband's grandmother, when she was alive, told me, a young mother, to start potatoes cooking in cold water, bring them to a boil, cook them until fork-tender, mix them into real mayonaisse and onions and sweet pickles. 

I took a sharp paring knife from the utensil crock, offered it to my eager young daughter. She dropped her pony on the wet counter, accepted the knife, hopped up and down, laughing.

"Hold the potato like this," I showed her. "Hold the knife like this."

"She'll cut herself," my dad warned. "She'll cut her finger off."

"Draw your fingers up," I told her. "Keep them tucked out of the way."

She drew her fingers up, angled the blade toward the pad of her own thumb.

"Let me cut the potatoes," my dad said. "She's going to get hurt."

I was nervous, too. She could cut her finger clean off, and my stubbornness, my pigheaded independence...would it be worth it? I felt the urge to rescue her from the glinting blade, from the injury, the pain.

The sharp knife slid through the solid flesh of the vegetable, toward her tender thumb.

"You're gonna be sorry," he said. 

I resisted.

My daughter was not distracted. She moved the knife, swiftly, confidently, and then, PLOP, a chunk of white flesh landed, SPLASH, in the pot of cold water.

"You did it!" I said to her, to myself. "You did it." 

On she went, slicing, until, fingers intact, not a drop of blood shed, the job was complete. She hugged me fiercely, scooped up her pink pony, trotted away. 

I know my father loves me. I know he wants to protect his grandchildren. But I will choose today not to allow myself, my children, to be bound by fear, not to let others bind them to fear. They will live fully, confidently, and we will both be better for it. 

And maybe, someday, my father will be better for it, too.