Fear Itself

Tending to Endings (thirty-six)

On the morning of September 11, 2001 after I saw television coverage of a plane hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center and realized something horrible and big and very scary was happening in our country, I drove to work early. Normally I worked from home in the morning and taught middle and high school English in the afternoons at Riverstone International School in Boise. But on this morning, I got in the car and drove in early because my sons were in Ms. Rose’s first grade class at Riverstone. The first thing my fear wanted on the morning buildings were hit by planes was to be in the same building as my sons.

Fear has long been my nemesis. My parents would tell a story about how one summer while we were on vacation, they wanted me to overcome my fear of jumping into the swimming pool. They would count, one, two, three—and I would bend my knees in preparation for launch. But something stopped me each and every time. I think I was afraid of breaking my heels or anklebones on the bottom of the pool or water going up my nose and drowning or some invisible monster lurking in the deep end. I had an active imagination.

My parents promised me I would be fine. Then they promised me ice cream sundaes with two scoops, then three. Pretty soon —just to see how far this would go—mom promised a new bicycle, and eventually a Barbie Playhouse, which she was totally against. We weren’t allowed to have toys that were advertised on TV. Other families eventually joined in on cheering me on. Even with added peer pressure, I remained firmly on the concrete, my toes gripping the pool ledge.

On the drive home from Wisconsin, no one else in my family seemed overly concerned by my failure—it was a funny Laura story, as they told it—but what I remember feeling was despair.

It wasn’t only jumping into pools that scared me as a kid. I was afraid of dogs, being tickled, roller coasters, berries that might be poisonous, spent fireworks, being alone in our unfinished basement, and the way bubble bath suds would expand exponentially under the thump of the faucet. Bubbles may seem harmless to the average person, but after my bath I lay in bed imagining foam filling up the whole bathroom and moving down the hall towards the room where I slept.

I did eventually jump in a pool and even became a competitive swimmer and a lifeguard. According to my mom this happened because I finally took lessons from Mr. Finny who was a bald man with a gruff, raspy voice and a huge belly. He would bark instructions from the pool deck. Mom said, I was more afraid of Gil Finny than the water.  It was a success of sorts, but I couldn’t count on Mr. Finny to be standing on deck every time I needed to do something scary.

I could write a book on all my methods of trying to manage fear. Much of my early life I tried the closed-eyes-and-try-not-to-think-about-it variety of getting through. Or I would vacillate between complete avoidance and immersion therapy, throwing myself into new situations before I had time to be afraid. Results varied.

I’ve never found FDR’s famous quote about nothing to fear but fear itself all that helpful. If I am afraid of the pool, or the new job, or the course of climate change, or the pandemic, and I fail at talking my way out of that fear, it means I actually do have something to fear. Maybe not the thing, but my fear. Which is kind of scary, right? It’s the bubbles expanding exponentially all over again.

On September 11, 2001, I was afraid, but what made me get in that car and drive to school was a desire to make sure I was near my kids in case they needed me. This may not have been logical or noble. There wasn’t anything I really could do at school, and it wasn’t like I was running into a burning building. I just sat in the teacher prep room and talked with other teachers about what was happening and how we were going to help our students and our children and ourselves cope with the tragedy still unfolding.

But when I think back to the that day, the difference between that and many other frightening times in my life was that I was not thinking of myself.

I can take no credit for this impulse of course. It came with the kids, this freedom from self-centered fear. But the example has been more useful to me than advice from Nike ad campaigns or my own attempts at fear management.

I realize not everyone needs to become a parent to discover the power of love, but motherhood gave me a crash course in getting over myself. It was like a freebie view into what life can be like when I’m not buckling under the weight of self-centeredness. And it came without any effort on my part, like grace. Of course raising kids took work. But I never once had to talk myself into loving them.

People talk about whether disaster bring out the best or the worst in people. And the answer for me is both, sometimes both in the same day or hour. Love doesn’t always come as easily as it did on a river of maternal hormones. Sometimes I think of how I can be helpful. Other times I sob or get snippy with the Verizon representative or have an anxiety attack or spend an afternoon in bed. Sometimes I have to remember to turn my attention to love and then to practice doing so again.

When I taught high school I learned that I could only teach well by loving my students. Other strategies failed because I was terrified to be up there in front of that class. There were so many variables to any given lesson plan, so much could go wrong interacting with 160 teenagers each day. If I was thinking about me and whether I was doing a good job, I’d never make it.

But if I was thinking about them, about who they were and what they needed and how I might help, well, then the fear lifted. I didn’t have to tell them I loved them, which would’ve been awkward and maybe unprofessional. What mattered was showing up with their wellbeing at the center. It meant listening to who they were and helping them find their way. The result was that teaching was a lot more rewarding and time consuming and fun. We formed a community.

Some call it service work, but it feels more reciprocal to me than that. I think of what I turned to on that day nineteen years ago. I wrote poems with my students and reached out to my one friend in New York and listened to those who were worried about loved ones they hadn’t yet heard from. I held my sons as much as they would let me and then played with them in the backyard before dinner.

When I asked others what they had done on the day of the attacks: they reached out to loved ones, gardened, played with the dog, went for a walk, baked bread. Acts of love.

It is another September full of loss. We do not know the extent or what will be left or what we will create anew. We are mid story in the pandemic, in the fire season, in the election, in the climate emergency, in the injustice still unreckoned. Fear is a seductive force and there are plenty of invitations to stoke it.

Or, I can show up for Love.

More Resources

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. Rebecca Solnit, (2009).

The study of disasters makes it clear that there are plural and contingent natures–but the prevalent human nature in disaster is resilient, resourceful, generous, empathic, and brave.–from the book’s prelude, Falling Together.

John Lewis: Good Trouble. A documentary film about the legendary civil rights leader who died in July, and definitely a story about love in action.

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