This is an old story from 2009 that I am reposting for a dear, sweet friend! The story still stands, but ages and life are way different 🙂
With All The Lights Still On
There is a dead bird on my front porch and I firmly believe that FedEx has avoided leaving my much-awaited package because of it.
My front door is surrounded by glass windows, the one above the door being the widest. It is this window that birds, it seems, cannot refuse smashing into, often causing them to die and burdening me with a fresh carcass at my door. Birds are all fancy feathers and songs till they’re lying dead at the entrance to your home. Then they’re just a nuisance; just stupid flying rats.
The sound created by birds hitting my window has never made it onto my list of dismissable house noises. It is loud, firm, and I confuse it with the sound of my front door shutting. And – if you couldn’t see this coming from ten miles away- I usually physically freeze, stop breathing and chalk it up to, yes…
a ghost.
If you know me, you’d think me silly for stories’ sake. If you know me well, you know I am deathly afraid of ghosts. Though I’ve never seen one, heard one, talked to one, or received any infinitesimal confirmation that ghosts exist, I am completely convinced that I am on the continuous verge of being haunted. Sure, who hasn’t slept for a week after watching The Grudge or refused to return a scary movie because the cover art is visibly ‘uninviting’? Who hasn’t, in their adulthood, slept at the foot of their parents’ bed after being unforeseeably subjected to a commercial for Mothman Prophecies? And really, when wasn’t the last time you made your mom and best friend come over to your house while you moved because-you claimed- a ghost was using your keyless entry to repeatedly lock you out of your car? (Yes, this is a true story. Happened over the summer. And, yes, my shame runs ocean-deep.)
I may not fear short skirts, competition, public speaking or public drunkenness, saying how I REALLY feel, admitting mistakes, falling off the bar or karaoke. But ghosts? Just.. Plain. Frightening.
On our recent trip to North Carolina I forced my sister and son to hear countless episodes of my favorite radio program This American Life. One episode, titled Fake Science, featured a story on amateur ghost hunters as well as audio of what they claimed were ghostly voices. In the back of my mind the bell of probable indecency rang being that I had a six-year-old in the car, but, really, I thought, Are you ever too young to be terrified? I have this horrible habit of considering my son adult-like, like me, forgetting that I myself am not much tougher than any average, dopey little girl.
For the entire duration of the program I reconfirmed with my son that he was not scared. No, he said, and asked even that I replay the audio. Here is when it’s a good thing that world leaders don’t call on me in times of national crises, because if my answer isn’t, “Fuck it! Let’s drink!” my default resolution is going to be, “Paralyzing fear is no excuse!” In other words: Despite anyone else’s presence, I can’t resist anything that interests me.
So we listened and discussed and reached our own unworldly conclusions. Then, so I thought, we dropped it.
My son instantly changed in the dark. That night he cowered at shadows and harbored tears of terror in the corners of his eyes which skewed his perceptions and caused him not to leave my side. Finally I told him it was time to take a shower. In the storm of refusal that set in, my son screamed, cried, even clawed his way out of the shower and gripped me with the finality of rigor mortis. “Please don’t leave me,” he begged, screaming. “Pleeeeeease!!!” My initial anger was broken by his desperate action. As I held my son in all his vulnerability, my heart broke, and, still holding him, I stepped into the shower. I was fully clothed: jeans, tennis shoes, t shirt, hat even. I stood with him for(what seemed like)ever, reassuring him over and over and over that “There are NO such things as ghosts,” and in that very breath seeing my arms full of goosebumps and resisting the urge to look over my shoulder to perhaps see some phantasmal figure shaking its head at my hypocrisy.
How is it, I questioned myself, that I got here like this? What course of action ultimately led me to be standing fully clothed in a shower, washing a crying six year old, claiming that the very thing I am ultimately, completely, and unequivocally afraid of does not, in any way, exist?
Aiden and I stood across from each other on the bathroom floor, each pitiable in our own respect. “You’re all wet, Mommy,” he said with a look that showed he knew I had just endured something unpleasant and unnecessary and may be on the verge of snapping into complete hysterics. The truth is: I was angry. I was angry at me because I do so many things I know better than to do, I do them with little thought, and my doing them causes upset in other people and reverts much more heartache back onto me. I was angry at me because I had to stand there in all my cowardice and explain to my son that I am scared too, that I have to choose to be brave, explaining to him in a web of words that I’m something simply stuck inbetween a woman and a child.
My best conclusion- my punishment of sorts- was dripping wet clothes and a bit tongue. Perhaps it is my own unwillingness to face my own fears, perhaps it is my complete disregard for other people on the fatuous premise that a little raunch never hurt anyone. But I do know this above that: You can’t cause a problem and blame anyone else for yourself being showered in its consequence.
I went into my room alone and laid in bed barely-breathing still with all the lights on, checking the hallway for any ghosts that may happen to pass by.
seeallisonplay 