If it wasn’t already weird enough that I didn’t own any furniture and my main kitchenware was a Russian-doll-esque quintet of rainbow-colored mixing bowls, R. also had the pleasure of experiencing another one of my quirks right away. Every weekday morning, I would rise at 4:30 am to walk over the river, across bridges and through homeless camps to Portland’s Pearl District for a 6 am spin class.
The walk from my lady apartment on SE Hawthorne Street took approximately 57 minutes. I made the trek completely alone, in the dark, blasting an eclectic playlist of fun., Florence + The Machine, Whitney Houston, HAIM, Kayne West, Neon Trees and more through my headphones. On a near daily basis, I became the poster child for everything you’re not supposed to do as a lone woman if you want to avoid getting murdered in an alley. And yet, I thrived. There was never a single day where I felt threatened or fearful or unsafe. It didn’t seem that weird to me.
Until, that is, I heard R. recounting this habit to my parents during a recent trip to Ohio: “I went with her once, and I felt uncomfortable.” This is exactly the shit my parents, particularly my mom, never wants to know about. They don’t want to hear about the times I drunkenly wandered the boroughs of New York City unaccompanied at night. They would rather not learn about all the times I stayed up past 4 am working at the Pita Pit in college and then stomped across campus to get back home. They definitely don’t want me to tell them about the multiple times I got into cars or on the backs of motorbikes with strangers in Thailand.
But I don’t do these things to worry them, and I certainly don’t have a death wish. I simply don’t perceive these things as risky. I believe in the good of people. I trust my intuition. And most of all, I’d rather something tragic happen to me while I’m out living my life than be too afraid to live at all. This mentality makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, I come from a lineage of professional worriers.
It started with my grandfather, whom I used to call Mr. Safety. He’s the one who always had a cautionary tale at the ready. Before I went to college, he told me to remember to never leave my drink unattended at parties. This was good advice that I took to heart. Then, he told me that I should make sure there were locks on the windows in my dorm room and indicated that I should have some installed if this was not already a customary feature of the buildings on Syracuse University’s south campus. Can you imagine being that roommate? I told him there were locks on the windows and left it at that.
My mom inherited this fearfulness about the world. She never let us do anything remotely dangerous as kids. She always had to know exactly where we were at all times, and to this day, I attribute the reason why I never live nearer than two states away to her helicopter parenting. I don’t think my dad even understood the extent of it until he worked from home one day and heard my sister and I yell into the house “we’re going in the front yard!” and “we’re going in the backyard!” no less than 8,000 times. He thought this was (rightfully) insane, so he asked my mom about it. She shrugged. “I just like to know where they are.”
The good news is that this crippling anxiety has been passed to my younger sister. Now, she’s the one worrying about the state of the world. I know this for certain because while I’m out here letting my child play with wine corkscrews and flip out of car seats, she’s walking around the park in Perrysville, OH with a switchblade stashed in a secret compartment of her stroller like a complete nutjob.
And look, it’s great to have at least one person who is careful in the partnership. It’s usually the person who hates fun. In my world, it’s R. who takes the sharp wine opener away from the toddler, navigates the unknown terrain and worries about the paperwork. He’s the one who has the sense to drive to the spin class that begins at dawn. He makes sure our kid is careful when there is legitimate danger around, and he’s never, not even once, watched his daughter somersault down the porch steps or fall off the breakfast bar counter you let her climb on. I very much appreciate that balance in our relationship. If my motto is “what could possibly go wrong?” his response is “probably a lot actually.”
There are instances, however, where the protective bubble can prove suffocating or, at a minimum, limiting. My mom’s fears range from driving over bridges and flying on airplanes to getting dementia and having a rogue employee replace my grandmother’s real pearls with fake ones if she ever takes the necklace into the jewelers to get a clasp fixed. It’s a lot. I’ve had to talk her down from the idea that my dad has the early stages of Alzheimer’s more than once. The man is forgetful and not super present when doing low-priority tasks. It’s not a crime.
But I don’t mind that. I’m happy to take those calls. What I’m not happy to do is let my mom’s fearfulness impact my daughter. After our most recent trip to Ohio, I saw what fear can do to a kid who is effortlessly brave. My mom didn’t want my daughter going up and down the steps alone, which was reasonable, but instead of holding her hand and helping her, my mom just picked her up and carried her. Every single time. By the time we got home, E. was scared to do the steps like she’d done a million times before. We ended up in a standoff at the top of the loft, her refusing to go down and me refusing to carry her. She cried and tantrumed. I (lovingly) cursed my mom.
This setback felt annoying because it’s incredibly important to me that Bean is a confident, independent rabblerouser who isn’t afraid of the world. It’s harder than you’d think to let go enough to cultivate this outlook in your child. And if I’m being honest, I’ve never understood my mom’s perspective more than I do now. It is hard to let your heart walk around outside your body and not want to loom over her at every turn.
I’m sure that I will have to talk myself down when she decides to do her own version of crazy shit I’ve done over the years. But I will encourage her to do it regardless. Her fearlessness is a big enough thing for me that I willingly take the biggest risk of all: letting my daughter sometimes fall, so she’ll be empowered to take chances, be brave, pick herself up when necessary and always, always bet on herself.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix