The Heredity of Fear?

I have an overactive imagination. Always have, always will. As a child, a steady diet of Stephen King and Poltergeist ensured nightmares for life. The Lost Boys still has me checking the night sky if I walk across my yard after dark. I look around corners, expecting the worst. I can't look in a mirror in the dark for fear of meeting Bloody Mary.

Something is possibly wrong with me; I accepted this a long time ago. And since I can't fix it, my diet of horror movies continues unabated (with the exception of a brief hiatus post-giving-birth - it's exceptionally difficult to see bad things happen to young women when you are suddenly responsible for raising one).

But that said, I don't like nightmares. I don't like waking my husband by yelling out in the middle of the night because I've been chased down by the undead and am trapped in a public restroom, wedged into a stall between the toilet and the wall and they're coming through the door to grab my neck (true story...well, true nightmare anyway).

So, now that I'm responsible for raising a young woman, it's my duty to protect her, right? I tried not to introduce anything scary into her world; I tried to keep fears from finding her.

But Zoe is two, and she is spunky and feisty and no matter what I do, she is determined to follow in my footsteps, I fear.

Her favorite book last Halloween was Goodnight Goon, which is full of ghosts and werewolves. "Monster" was a fairly early word (she makes a mean monster face!). And no matter how much I tried to keep the concept of death out of her two-year-old mind, two days ago I caught her trying to squish a bug, saying "I want to kill the bug, Mommy."

Ew.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she already has some quirky fears of her own. One night, not too long ago, I was surprised to hear her screaming not long after she had gone to bed. I raced up the stairs, afraid of what I'd find.

But it was just Zoe, in her crib, crying. I picked her up to soothe her and asked her what the matter was.

"Mommy, there's a frog in my bed!"

I looked, I kid you not. I mean, this is South Carolina - anything is possible when it comes to creatures.

Finding nothing, I said, "Honey, there's not a frog in your bed."

She looked at me, all sleepy-eyed and tearful, and responded, "Toad!"

Nowadays, her Buzz Lightyear doll stands guard on her dresser to keep her bed free of both frogs AND toads.

And last night, at dinner, a new fear reared its ugly head.

Currently, at 6:00, when we eat dinner, the sun is setting over the fence in our backyard. The light streams in through our porch, on which we have never hung blinds.

Last night, that streaming light refracted itself through a half-full plastic water bottle that sat on our kitchen table, and that refracted light danced across the wall next to Zoe's head, moving in rhythm with the water in the bottle. It was really quite pretty.

Zoe saw it and shrieked! "The light! The light, Mommy! The light, Daddy!"

She was utterly petrified, and nothing we said convinced her that the light would not hurt her or that it would not come back after we removed the offending bottle. She spent the rest of the meal alternately crying, covering her head with a napkin so she was well-hidden should the light reappear, or sitting on one of our laps.

So I can't protect her, sometimes I can't even soothe her, but I can sit there and cover my own face with my own napkin so at least she doesn't see me laugh.