She Doesn't Even Know to Be Scared

fear of flying—and other things to keep to ourselves

Fear, I believe, is contagious. It is handed from person to person like a hot potato; it burns us, we pass it on… And I can’t help but wonder: what would happen if we held that hot potato until it cooled in our hands instead, even if it burns? Could we protect the soft outstretched palms of our children from being needlessly scalded? 

Airplanes are one of my least favorite places in the world. In the words of the great Thurl Ravenscroft of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch: If given the choice between the two of them, I’d choose a seasick crocodile. 

I share this because I flew to Minnesota over the weekend for a retreat with my Truly Co. sisters, and it reminded me of when our family traveled to Florida a couple of months ago. We caught a direct flight on Breeze Airways from Portland to Tampa for a few days in the sun with friends, and nobody was more excited than our three-year-old daughter, Vivian. Before the flight attendant could even mime the safety procedures for an ocean landing, Vivian had swapped her sneakers for flip flops and began to ask, “When will we be dere?” She wore her sunglasses and pink banana bucket hat for the duration of the flight, and sang to herself the entire time—something she only does when she’s so happy she can hardly stand it. 

I, on the other hand, shuddered when the plane lurched from land to sky. I grabbed our oldest son’s knee; I held the baby close to my chest. I pressed my head into the seat and took long, slow breaths. When the seatbelt sign flashed on with a ding! and the pilot’s voice came over the speakers, I tried to ignore the visceral urge to get up, to run, to find a place where I wasn’t trapped in a metal death machine. 

In the row behind me, Vivian continued to chatter on with my husband. I marveled at the way she disregarded the turbulence, how she could be so unperturbed by the strange noises. She just kept coloring and singing and I thought to myself, “She doesn’t even know to be scared.” 

It got me thinking about the things that we pass down to our children—the good and the bad. Someday I’ll teach her how to make my grandmother’s butterscotch rolls, telling her to only touch the dough as much as she has to, just like my aunt taught me. I’ll make sure she knows all the words to A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash and that she should always, always moisturize her face. We’ll talk about how she doesn’t have to strive to earn her worth, and to always respond to homemade cookies with a resounding yes—diets be damned. 

At the same time, there are things I don’t want to teach her; these are the same things I’m trying to unlearn myself. I don’t want to teach her that rest is a luxury, for example, or to pass down my unfortunate tendency to choke when the competition gets too fierce. I hope she isn’t faced with a quarterly existential crisis, that she’ll be content instead to have her hot morning coffee and her ration of daily bread. But perhaps above all, I don’t want to be the one to teach her to be scared. 

Fear, I believe, is contagious. It is handed from person to person like a hot potato; it burns us, we pass it on. Perhaps there are times it can serve to keep us safe, but mostly it just circulates within homes and communities and nations, being taught and then learned—and then passed on and on and on. And I can’t help but wonder: what would happen if we held that hot potato until it cooled in our hands instead, even if it burns? Could we protect the soft outstretched palms of our children from being needlessly scalded? 

As the plane shook and Vivian sang on, I wrote this short poem: 

SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW TO BE SCARED 

She doesn’t even know to be scared. 
The plane jostles like a cheap plastic trinket
and she is pleased as punch
as she opens her peanut butter cracker
and licks it clean. 

The seatbelts light up—
those tiny icons that flicker
on and off with
my illusions of safety—
and she studies the thick
black lines
of her coloring;
asks which crayon is best
for the princess’ tea party dress. 

She hasn’t learned yet
to be scared, so I
wipe the crumbles from her chin
and hope my eyes 
don’t betray me
when I smile and say,
“Definitely use the pink.” 

Though one of the ways we love our children well is by teaching them, maybe we can also show them love by discerning what not to teach them. We’ll never get it perfectly right—we can’t escape being human—but when we see that they haven’t learned to be scared yet, then by golly, let’s hold that hot potato in our own hands as long as we possibly can.

Yes: even if it burns.

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*This article was originally published in my weekly parenting column, The Village in its March 2024 issue.