Dear Scarlette,
When I was a little girl I spent my summers making daisy chains. Once, I wove together a strand of clover flowers so long that I tucked it in and out of the trees, creating the boundaries of an elaborate forest house. You could duck in and out of the kitchen and I would serve you acorns on a place setting made of brightly colored leaves that would rival anything you’d find on Pinterest today. Streaks of sunlight dappled the rough bark walls and I set the place alight with the magic of my imagination. Those were beautiful summer days.
Everyone else was at the neighborhood pool.
I pulled on a bathing suit to run through the sprinkler that sat at the end of our garden hose and pretended it didn’t matter that I was too afraid of the water to join the other kids at the end-of-the-year pool party. I slipped out of line on the class trip and feigned that I was too small to ride the ride, pumping my legs as high as the swing would soar once we were all gathered at the park for the after-picnic, lest they uncover my fear of heights.
I cloaked myself in imagination and words and shut my eyes to try to drown out all of the fears. They chased me far into the night and through every new experience, wrapping around my heartbeat and tightening my chest so that my breaths came in short bursts, a clawing panic behind my eyes.
I saw her sitting apart me from, the girl I wanted to be just out of reach from the girl I was with only that creeping f-word emotion driving the wedge between the two halves.
Sometimes I gathered up all of the courage that there was, days and nights of accumulating courage. I stored it all up and exhausted it on single events, like the time I put one foot in front of the other and walked across the suspension bridge hanging high over the rapids. I stopped twice to collect the nerve I had tried to summon all summer long, but never long enough to let go of the railing and wipe the tears that fell down through the planks and onto the rushing water below. I crossed the bridge though.
I stood backwards over a ledge, a rope burning my shaking hands as he assured me that I could climb back down the way we came, that I didn’t have to drop over the sheer side of the cliff. And I let myself fall backwards along the face of the rock and waited for the fear to beat me to the earth below but it clung to me all the way down.
I rode every single roller coaster in the park and each was just as terrifying as the last. I thought repetition would lessen the panic and loosen the tightness but the fear stayed exactly the same from start to finish. Beginning to end I felt it, despite all of the assurances that once it was over I wouldn’t be afraid anymore.
I was still afraid.
I thought that facing it head on in a fiery confrontation would change me from fearful to fearless. But facing it down doesn’t take the fear away. It doesn’t quell the pounding heart or the catch of breath.
Because, as oft quoted, “Courage is not the absence of fear.”
And then I had you.
I was afraid of so many things. I was afraid of labor. I was afraid of the numbers: 2nd trimester, 25 weeks, 8 centimeters, 1 pound 8.6 ounces. I was afraid of the scalpels and the machines and the sounds of the alarms that quickened steps towards sick babies.
I met you and understood another quote, an ageless one that doesn’t circle the internet but lies in the thin pages of red-lettered text.
“Perfect love drives out all fear.”
Everything I was afraid of, everything that was hard to do was pushed aside by the intensity of my love for you. Every single second of the day for one hundred and fifty six days my pulse quickened with fear but it wasn’t for myself. It was for you. So I did all the hard things. I held my hands in front of me until they stopped trembling and then I put down a feeding tube, swiftly, concisely, confidently because my love for you drove out that fear.
For a lifetime I was wrong. Fear wasn’t separate from courage and I wasn’t broken. I was brave all along. I just didn’t know it was there until I really needed it.
Right now you seem fearless, with your front flips over the edge of the couch and the shiner to show for it. But one day you might be afraid and I hope you’ll trust me when I tell you that there is no shame in feeling it but that it is worth it to put one foot in front of the other and walk across the shaky bridge to see the waterfall on the other side.
I’ll hold your hand above the rapids.
*I’m reviving this series of legacy letters, hopefully 😉 | graphics by the ink nest
