The Mama Spot

Overcoming My Fear of Heights

Thanks to Naked with Socks On for the inspiration to write this one.

For several years now, I have had this recurring nightmare (of a memory of an actual event) that I have only mentioned to one person. Well, it's not really a nightmare if it randomly pops into my mind when I'm wide awake, I guess.  So, we'll call it a vision (of a memory of an actual event)...a scary one.

Years ago, when my son was an infant, my family, including my son's father who was my boyfriend at the time, took my mother to Tennessee for Mother's Day or her birthday or some other auspicious occasion.  Among the sites we visited was Lookout Mountain.  From the top of this mountain, you can actually see seven different states.  It was an amazing view.  At one section of the tour, there was a bridge...a bunch of wood slats with ropes for railings...that you could walk across to get from one area to the next.  For the more sane, there was an alternate concrete path.  Without thinking, with infant in arms, I began to walk across the one that swayed in the wind. 

[I should pause here to provide two critical bits of information for context.  First, I am really afraid of heights...really afraid of heights.  Second, this memory I'm sharing is so troubling to me that even as I am writing about it, I am sick to my stomach.]

Midway, I realized that I had lost my mind; that I was standing between peaks on some ginormous mountain, suspended a gazillion miles above the Earth with my baby in my hands.  Fortunately, I didn't freak out...we made it across.  I don't remember how.

For years now, that experience has haunted me...just pops up out of nowhere on the regular and takes me through brief bouts of internal drama. In the pit of my stomach, I feel the most visceral, nauseating guilt for taking that risk with my child's life.  And, for some reason, I cannot get it out of my mind. 

 A few days ago, the daymare stepped up its game.  Scanning some news site, I saw the headline for a story related to the baby-swinging man; I didn't even read the story...just the headline was enough to make me crazy.  Now, I not only relive the bridge walk.  Now, I actually see myself dangling my child over the bridge!  Horrifying, I know.  But, don't commit me yet.

The truth is, I think this modified daymare is related to a recent change in my employment status...Really.  After living through eight years and twice as many layoffs at my now former place of employment, I was "impacted."  No tiny violins, please.  See, despite my initial shock, because it takes a minute or sixty to just absorb the the words and then another minute or sixty to make the reality shift, I have been wanting this, praying for this, fantasizing about this.  Whatever that thing is inside you that nags at you when it knows that you know that you are not doing what you're intended to do...well, it had been effing with me for a long time.  And, finally, it grabbed my hand and yanked me right off the cliff.

And now, just days later, I find myself experiencing excitement about all the possibilities in my life, about the opportunity to finally see what I'm really made of.  I feel compelled to step out onto that wobbly bridge again shunning the more concrete nine-to-seven corporate path to find my way to my destiny.  Romantic.  Exhilirating.  But, there's the whole dangling kid thing that I'm praying my way through.  These horrible visions I'm having, the remixed version, that is, I'm certain that they are the manifestation of my guilt and fear about stepping off this cliff and carrying my son into a situation where the ground is not steady, where we may sway with the whim of the wind, albeit high above most humans and with a glorious view beneath us.

But, this is what I know.  Somehow, I got that baby across that bridge (I think...maybe I turned around...I really don't remember...but for the sake of my sanity...let's go with my getting him across) and here we stand; him with no memory of it, and me, shaken, stirred and a little less sane, but still standing.  I imagine that even if on the other end of this whole pink slip affair I decide to clutch the ropes and inch my way  to the next place cradling him all the way, we will find ourselves on solid ground.  This mother will not let it be any other way.

So, my questions for you:  When was the last time you stepped off the cliff?  Have you ever experienced the challenge of balancing pursuit of your dreams with the responsibilities of real life?  How did you do it?  Have you been contemplating a cliff-jumping lately?

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones...and Words Will Make Me Whoop that Ass

First, let me start by shouting out, "Peace!" to my pacifist friends out there.  I feel you, but I just had a flashbackSo, on Monday, my son got into a fight at soccer practice.  I was sitting on the sidelines chatting it up with my new Black-like-me single, co-parenting, tech telecommuting soccer mom friend when from the corner of my eye, I caught that David Banner you-wouldn't-like-me-when-I'm-angry look in my child's eyes.  I had no idea what had happened; but a mother knows her son, and without another thought I jumped out of my chair and ran to grab him.  It was surreal.  I felt like I was moving in slow motion.  Well, actually, I was.  By the time I got there, he had already kicked one of his teammates, punched another and been hemmed up by the coach

Once I got over the embarrassment (because who wants to be *that* parent), I focused on my child, admonishing him for his behavior like most good parents would.  It took him a while to calm down, but finally he did and apologized to his team and his coach.  I learned later from my son, that after he'd told his teammates, who at the time were on the other scrimmage team, that his team had three and theirs had zero, "the whole team" had told him to "shut up."  That's a bad word in our house.  And, it was enough to trigger his anger gene.

My child has a temper, and in the moment that anger overtakes him and the few moments after, he really is out of control and completely fearless.  The first time I saw it in him was when he was two, just a little tot.  He was sitting in a two-armed chair at the dining room table.  His father was pretending to rough me up, just playing, and I was telling him to stop.  The next thing I know, my little one was standing up in the chair screaming at his father to stop hurting his Mama.  I went to calm him as I explained that Daddy was just playing.  But, as quickly as I set him down on the floor, he had run over to his father, whose biceps are the size of my waist when I was 22, and started trying to whoop his...well, his knee...he couldn't reach Daddy's ass.  He was not playing.  He had every intention of taking this man down.  He has a temper...and a dislike of injustice.  And, the truth is, he got it honestly.

So, flashback to the flashback.  Just a few minutes ago, as I was thinking about the Monday incident, I remembered Brad Ross and Andy Zangrelli.  Long story short, in sixth grade, my entire soccer team used to call me "Tar Baby" while my coaches did nothing.  Story of my youth...I was the lone Black child on the team, and even my "friends" left me hanging when it was time to choose sides in the game of race.  Weekly, my father would counsel me to just ignore them.  And I did.  And, nightly for a month, I had nightmares that involved me dropping my teammates' major organs onto a cold operating room floor.  I kept them to myself, but finally, unable to ignore both the team and the dreams, I asked the coach to do something.  He opted for the give-a-lecture-to-the-entire-team-in-front-of-her-and-isolate-her-even-more approach.  And, it worked...for five minutes...until Brad Ross, during the guilty silence shouted out, "OK. We'll leave the Tar Baby alone!"  

Before I even knew what had happened, I was standing in front of that boy slapping and punching the hell out of him.  When I realized what I was doing, I sprinted and hid behind the coach.  My father came to pick me up.  Through tears I told him about this horrible experience.  And he chastised me for not employing the words-can-never-hurt-me technique.

Andy Zangrelli.  Eighth grade.  Same story, different soccer team.  Italian-Chinese kid on my soccer team calls me "Nigger girl."  (Even then, I was thinking, um...does this kid realize he's not white?)  I kick him in the shin, drop him to the ground and do enough damage to break his rec specs in half.  Again, I end up in trouble and have to call his house to apologize.

OK.  So, you get my point.  I think history was repeating itself at the U8 Galaxy practice on Monday.  Yes, the offense to which my son reacted was different, but my offense as a parent was the same.  Sure.  There were better ways for both of us kids to deal with the pain and humiliation we felt.  But, we were kids, moved to draw on whatever strength, whatever power we could muster, to defend our spirits.  And, our parents didn't get it.  They didn't stand up for us, and they didn't empower us.  They made us wrong without acknowledging our pain or our desire for justice or our disbelief in that moment of trauma that using our words would do a damn thing.  (Of course, having stood on both sides, I now know that our parents were doing the best they could.  So, I won't blame them/me/us.  In fact, really, they got it.  They just didn't know what to do about it in the moment.)

Fortunately, I don't go around trying kick ass every time someone hurts my feelings anymore.  I've grown, learned other ways of dealing or fighting back if necessary.  I've even learned the art of ignoring.   And, I'll work hard to guide my son to that place, too, holding onto faith that he will get there (before his twenties, unlike his Mama.)

But, in the meantime, secretly, I will find comfort knowing that he's carrying a can of vintage whoop ass in his back pocket in case of emergencies.