Fears

I woke up at 3 a.m. today to the sound of Theo crying and thought, "It's 9/11." Kind of a weird first thought.

I have been a little bit worried about his recent night waking, since I'm not used to it and my pediatrician had such reassuring things to say as, "It's probably nightmares," and "You may just have to let him cry." Me: "Awesome! Thanks, that was really, really helpful."

It could be nightmares, separation anxiety, teething, normal development, a crystal ball into my future. The worst part is that it's not like when he was a baby and learning to sleep--now he knows how to sleep, and is waking up because something is wrong that he hasn't yet figured out how to fix by himself.

Have you read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? It's been a while since I have, and I've been trying to remember some details about it. The most vivid picture I have in my mind is the recurring series of photos throughout the book of a WTC "jumper" (that is, a man jumping or falling to his death from one of the top stories of the building). The book is essentially about the fears of a fictional young boy who, a few years later, is dealing with 9/11 and its implications, including the death of his father at the World Trade Center. Eventually the reader finds out that his father called after the crashes and before dying and left a voicemail, but instead of picking up the phone, the boy just listened to his voice as he left the message. His feelings of guilt from that choice (at about age 6) then feed his fears as a 9-year-old.

I can't remember how the book ended, except that I remember the concluding photos of the "jumper" in reverse order, that is, on his way up instead of on his way down. This image, and whatever words accompanied it, left me feeling hopeful and also thinking that I needed to say "I love you" more often.

Notice the time stamp on my post? It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 a.m. and I have been awake since 3-something. So was Theo until a few minutes ago. We let him cry for a while, with a "Lie down and go to sleep, Theo" from Matt at the bedroom door--sometimes that works. After some stop-and-go crying, it started up again big-time. The baby was pushing its feet into my ribs and I was wide awake, all the while thinking things like, "It's 9/11 today," and "If I were separated from Theo right now for some reason, would I want this to be my memory of him?" (ah, the morbidity of 4 a.m. musings), so I went in and picked him up from his crib.

His entire body was shaking. We sat in the rocking chair and he looked up at me in the half-dark with a tentative half-smile. Tears were running into his mouth as he started our post-nap routine, probably a reflex triggered by going from the crib to the rocking chair. "Jee-jee," he said through his pacifier and pointed to the picture of Jesus (this one) above the chair. "Yep that's right, that's Jesus. He loves you," I said, and he replied with the next line in our script, "Tree," pointing to the window. I opened the curtain slightly so that he could see his beloved tree, and his body began to relax. I held him for about 20 minutes, my hand resting on his little blond head and his fingers fumbling nervously around a corner of his blanket. Eventually his hiccupy sobs subsided and he shuddered into calmness again. The entire time, #2 continued kicking my ribs as if to let us know he/she wasn't going anywhere either.

I tried putting Theo back in bed but he tensed up again and cried. Matt came in and rocked him for a minute or two and it has been quiet for a while now.

Some of my favorite thoughts pertaining to fear--a big theme around this big anniversary--come from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Terror, Triumph, and a Wedding Feast, a speech delivered at BYU a year after 9/11, and Broken Things to Mend, from April 2006.

Faith and fear are a big theme with me always. I am a little bit schizophrenic about faith and fear, that is, I feel like the most laid-back person in the world half the time and the other half I spend dreaming up new things to fret about. My favorite scripture on this topic is from 2 Timothy 1:7: "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

And regarding fear in "post-9/11 society," where fears aren't just phantoms in a toddler's head but stem from real threats--and not just in third-world or war-torn countries--Elder Holland reminds us that terror today is ultimately nothing new. Fears and real threats have always existed and they continue to exist around the world. That's not just another morbid thought but in the end a hopeful one.

We must never, in any age or circumstance, let fear . . . divert us from our faith and faithful living. There have always been questions about the future. Every young person or every young couple in every era has had to walk by faith into what has always been some uncertainty. . . . But that is all right. This is the plan. It will be okay. Just be faithful. God is in charge. He knows your name and He knows your need.

I don't know what exactly to do about Theo's night waking--I definitely don't know what to do about it while camping this weekend, aside from my bleary suggestion to Matt a few hours ago that we get a hotel. So far all I have come up with is to take it one night at a time and try to love him a little more during the day.

That's all I've come up with for any of my fears, actually.

(Photos by Alisha)