Category: Fear

Stone Chicken

Earlier in the month-

Dear Self,

It is a fairly cool September morning. I am sitting on the back porch drinking coffee. My husband is doing the same. The lizard couple is emerging from their porch umbrella bed.

It is 8:23 a.m. and I am observing the stone chicken on the porch nearby.

She sits near our “Philosopher’s Rock”…so named because of the human and gargoyle statues that sit on that rock while pondering great thoughts.

The stone chicken is actually made of cement and is about a foot tall and heavy. Most of the paint that decorated her is long gone, weathered away by whatever elements she has been exposed to over the years. There is a hint of green at her base that is meant to represent grass, and a hint of yellow on one leg. Her beak is a bit chipped.

She was in our yard in Shreveport when I was a child, so she is at least 65 years old! We moved to Austin and for some reason my parent’s hauled her with us. After a year, they bought a house and she resided there for the next 49 years, until my mother died. Then her heaviness became part of our yard statue collection.

“Chicken” is often used to call out someone’s fear. This morning I am contemplating my own fears…some quite heavy. Fears that I have carried with me all these years…some acquired in Shreveport and some gathered here.

In the past few years I have been planning on painting the stone chicken’s bare skin. I might use bright paint in multiple colors. I might paint each feather a different color. This is only a plan. I do have the paint, but whether I ever paint the thing is to be determined.

It occurs to me, as I compare the stone chicken to my own fears…have I painted over and prettied up my own fears? In layers of…searching for words here…the word for pushing your feelings down…the words for pretending all was just fine…the words for pushing them, the fears and anger, away…I am in awe that I have carried these old feelings with me these many, many years. I know they have weighted down my spirit. Does knowing this allow me to release these old feelings? Well, that is a work in progress.

Maybe someday I will feel lighter, like this little wren perched on the stone chicken’s head.

Fears

Halloween is almost here, a time when many of us like to dress up in costumes and be someone else for a night. Maybe we hope to scare someone else with our creepy monster outfit. Some of us like to scare ourselves by visiting one of those haunted houses where scary people leap out of the darkness. As an older adult I just enjoy giving out candy at my front door and guessing what each cute kid is supposed to be. Not happening this year. We have not decorated the yard and we will not welcome trick or treaters to our house. Catching and spreading the covid-19 virus is the fear this year. Many of the neighborhood yard decorations have incorporated a pandemic theme into the traditional pumpkins and ghosts. One house down the street has a large sign that reads “Quarantown” and there are skeletons trapped behind bars.

Fear is as much a part of being human as loving and laughing. We are all afraid of something. I am afraid of being outside during a thunderstorm and of being a passenger in a car with a reckless driver. I am afraid to fly. These fears are all of things outside of myself. But, when I was younger I struggled with a different kind of fear. As a child I suffered from social anxiety. I would get very shy in large groups of people, especially ones I didn’t know. I would not talk. Then I developed a school phobia, causing me to miss many days of school. I became agoraphobic and was unable to go into a burger joint just to buy a hamburger. It was not easy, but eventually I overcame these fears. I am confidant and even outgoing. I can shop anywhere and I have even given talks before large groups of people.

But, some of my personal fears have come back in 2020. I drive only once a week, or less. As I approach my car I am nervous about going anywhere. I feel like my old socially anxious self. As I pull out of the drive-way I have to remind myself that, yes, I do know how to drive and I will not have a wreck. I am now used to wearing a mask in stores, but still feel super self-conscious around the other shoppers. I don’t speak to them. I turn my head away and do not inhale or exhale as I pass them. I am always relieved to get back out to the parking lot.

At the beginning of the pandemic I was mindful of the growing virus cases around the country. On March 26th I started a chart. I began to keep track of the number of covid-19 cases for my county, as well as all the counties in the United States where I had loves ones. On March 26th Travis county reported 119 cases. Two days later we had our first death. As I write this on October 29th, 7 months later, my county reports 31,851 cases and 449 deaths. 2.6% of the people here have been infected…or 1 out of every 39. It is worse in other parts of Texas.

There is a dread here. A fear that no matter the mask wearing and the social distancing, the invisible monster, the covid-19 virus, will get us anyway.

I am not even going to start talking here about my other dreads, the visible monsters: more unarmed people killed by police; election results/no election results; civil unrest; wildfires; hurricanes; loved ones I may never see again; murder bees…

One of my favorite quotes is this one by Eleanor Roosevelt ( a shy, introvert herself):

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”

Well, I am looking fear in the face. But, so much of what I am afraid of is not inside myself, but out there waiting to get me. So, like many of you, I will distract myself by the beauty outside:

“The fears of what may come to pass,

I cast them all away,

Among the clover scented grass,

Among the new-mown hay.”

(Louise Imogen Guiney- “A Song from Sylvan,” St. 2)

And Hey, two full moons in one month is a good thing, a sign of better times to come. Be fearless my friends and stay safe.

*Quotes from Volume One (1800-1899) The Quotable Woman-compiled and edited by Elaine Partnow- Pinnacle Books

*Covid-19 numbers from: Infection2020.com

*Photo- My mother and three of her siblings taken around 1940