fledging

remember not to instill your fears in your child.

this is something that comes to mind often. i have labored to raise a true artist. and as she draws ever closer to her field, her calling, i watch and hope she finds the road she will travel. the road that will bring her joy.

it is sometimes easier, i'm sure, to project your fears outward, than to stare them down. i try to own mine. to invite them in for tea. fears have purpose, i believe. they are some incarnation of what we want, what we've known, what we hope will not limit us. fears are just an amalgam of the stuff we want to scrape off our shoe, but can't.

mind you, i lean into the wind on this one. i pull my coat up tight around my neck and go forward. i appreciate those who push through their fears, too. and sometimes, along the way, i understand, briefly who i am. what i am to do. and the fears dissipate for that one hot second after a rain, when everything is washed clean and the steam filters up through the sunlit sky. and i understand it all.

so when fear comes calling, like my kitten turned cat, at five am, trying with all her messiahlike powers to get lazarusme out of bed, but there i lay, ignoring even her mighty power. i know that this is how it must be. she will wait, lurking outside the door until i emerge, and dust off my eyes. breaking through the veil and setting down her dry hardwon meal. she will pick at it and wander off, to pester another day.

i do not entirely think it is satiation she ever wants. or fear for that matter, it is not me crumpled in a heap that is the aim of fear, just a byproduct. what i'm coming to believe is that my powers of concentration and my ability to downright ignore that which is pestering me, fear and cats alike, is just the state of this life. the name and face may change. mine, fear's, the cat's. but it's the same story.