Fear

Where is my fear? I immediately think stomach or gut. That is where I feel fear – when I am aware I am feeling it. I don’t feel it often. When I do I am usually on the Beltway just a couple of tailgaters shy of an all out panic attack. If I am alone I might roll up the windows and scream. I did that once. I was driving up from Florida and I hit Richmond at rush hour. I was so tired I was seeing double the day had begun in Georgia where I’d driven for an hour in a fog so thick I couldn’t see the front of the Chrysler New Yorker. It had been my Uncle Paul’s car. Aunt Gladys had decided to give it to me – along with a backseat full of philodendrons, some Ann Murray eight tracks and some pear preserves. There might have been some vinyl records in the back seat too. The trunk was empty except the catalytic converter that Paul had removed from the Chrysler. I was afraid to drive from Jupiter, Florida to Washington, DC alone. But I wanted a car. I didn’t need a car, but I wanted one. Like I was saying, I got to Richmond at rush hour. 95 was full of homeward bound maniacs with some kind of a death wish – all going 80 miles an hour or so it seemed. I rolled up the windows and just screamed. I screamed until I was hoarse. If the other drivers noticed they probably just thought I was singing along with whatever the dj on WNOR was playing. I was surprised when I left Richmond behind and I was still alive. My next challenge was going to be navigating my way though DC traffic and snaking my way to 25th and Q Street. When our apartment building finally came into view I was so grateful I cried. Maybe that was why I misjudged the length of the Chrysler and “tapped” the VW behind me as I tried to parallel park on P Street. I pulled out and drive a few blocks east until I found a spot big enough to just glide into. I left philodendrons, eight tracks and preserves in the car and headed back to our apartment building. It was days before I retrieved the stuff from the backseat. Locating fear. I felt fear the time a couple of kids pointed guns at me outside of RFK Stadium. I felt fear, but my external response was to laugh uncontrollably. I’ve never understood that. I felt a little fear this weekend when I noticed I’d lowered the Boston Whaler into the water without replacing the bilge plug. Luckily Catherine was standing close enough to the lift switch to raise the boat before it sank. I felt fear in a plane once. We flew threw an awful storm. Buffeted by wind. Lightning. Nuns praying. Babies crying. Flight Attendants strapped in. I was feeling fear. I was feeling helpless. Powerless. Which is what always accompanies my fear.

All Good Things are Wild and Free

I have plants in my garden that I don't have names for. I saw a stalk that might be a Yucca this morning. It was leaning in the direction of the wild roses, almost hidden by the brambles next to the butterfly bush. Eden was wild. My dogs are wild. If I'd had children, they would have been wild - like I was. Wild and free, but also frightened and ashamed. I was all those things, but I never realized I was good. I tried to tame my wild hair. Tame my dreams. Tame my desires. When I couldn't do that, I just ran. I let my hair grown long and curly. I stopped looking into mirrors. I stopped looking back. Home disappeared. I disappeared. I was only a memory and my friends and family remembered a very different person than the one I became when I let myself be wild. Fear was replaced by resignation and shame by autonomy that times became apathy. I became as invisible to the people around me as the wind. I became as transparent as water. One day flowed into the next. I drifted further and further away from what was safe and sane. I was truly wild and I could lie spread eagle in the rocks and disappear.