fear

I've been meaning to write this post for a few weeks- I've been thinking a lot about fear and it's impact on Odin for a little while now. 

As soon as the weather grew a little warmer this spring, the carpenter bees began to make their appearance. I love our honeybees but for some reason the carpenter bee terrifies me. They're big and loud and curious and fearless. They hover inches from your head to say hello and to see what you are and it scares me. I find myself ducking back into the house and covering the back of my neck and squealing like a little girl. It's irrational, I feel, for me to be afraid of these little bugs. I've tried and tried not to be afraid but I found myself cowering whenever we were outside for fear one would land on me. 

A friend came over and as I expressed my fear for these little creatures, she admitted that she used to be afraid of them too. Her fear created a fear in her older daughter. She noticed this and didn't want her younger child to be afraid too, so she just chose not to be scared. This made me realize that I really need to toughen up, especially around Odin! I love my mom, but she's afraid (sorry mom, but it's true!!) of a lot, almost everything actually. I always tell her she's like the paranoid aunt from A Series of Unfortunate Events (the movie, I've never read the books). One of her fears is riding roller coasters, which is unfortunate because she lives in Florida. Florida has a ton of amusement parks and I grew up terrified of roller coasters. I remember many field trips where I sat aside, terrified to try one, while my friends went on and had a great time. When I was in seventh grade, my friends convinced me to go on Kumba at Busch Gardens. They lied (a lot) to get me to agree to go. They told me it didn't go upside down at all and that it was one of the slowest roller coasters at the park. Lies! That ride goes 60 mph and goes upside down 7 times (including a 114 ft tall vertical loop). My eyes were closed the entire time and the snapshot from the ride of me was hilarious, but upon exiting my immediate response was, "let's do that again!" And we did. A few times.

I don't really feel like I have many fears but the few that I do have I really think are entirely irrational. I really don't want Odin to grow up with fears that will impact his sense of adventure and wanderlust. I'm going to work on my fears so that he doesn't have to work on his.