A New Year

Brave little bears

A short story, part fiction, with some bits of truth

“Get that out of your mouth!”

She looked up from the deer’s carcass, blood smeared from nose to chin, a chunk of meat clenched in her teeth. Her breath steamed into the cold winter air.

“Why?” she asked, pulling the stringy, dripping thing from her mouth. She stretched it between her two hands, straining to pull the single piece of flesh apart. "It's real chewy."

“It’s not cooked,” he said, setting his rifle in the notch of a tree.

“Bears don’t cook deers when they eat them.”

“Well, you’re not a bear.”

“I am! Rawr!”

He plucked the dripping gobbet from her hand and whipped it away into the forest, and she jumped about him growling and swiping with rigidly hooked fingers. Finally, she kicked him in the shin.

“I AM a bear.”

“Fine. But someday you’re going to be a grown woman and grown women do not eat raw meat with their bare hands.”

“Grown women have bear hands?” She eagerly made claws again.

“Not exactly,” he said, and then sighed at her crestfallen expression. He squatted on his heels and beckoned her. “Come here, little bear.”

He wiped her face with several handfuls of snow, an effort that deteriorated into a small-scale battle and left him sprawled on his back in a snow drift. She glared at him defiantly, wiping her cheeks furiously with the backs of her sleeves. He glared back as he struggled to rise, but couldn’t maintain his ire as he overbalanced and fell sideways back into the drift. He heard giggling as he struggled to extricate himself.

“Alright, get over here and help your old man!” 

In the resulting tug-of-war, the tiny giggler offered marginal assistance, but he maneuvered so she would believe she was doing most of the work. By the time he was on his feet, they were both breathing hard. He said something about her muscles, and she beamed up at him, eyes bright, cheeks rosy, and drops of blood spattering her coat. 

"How did it taste?" he asked.

"Not my favorite. I think I would like Rhinoceros better."

"I'm sure. Do me a favor, would you? The next time there's a dead animal on the ground, don't put any of it in your mouth."

* * *

His steps plunged into the snow, over and over again. For a while the girl had shouted directions to him from the sled, but now she was silent, and the only sounds were his rhythmic steps and the constant crunch of the sled over the snow. At a clearing in the trees he paused and let the sled come to a stop. He shrugged the rope from his shoulder and stretched, staring out over the valley below.

“What’s out there?” the girl asked. She didn't move from her spot, nestled in a bundle of blankets, the deer’s body stretched out beside her.

“Civilization,” he said.

"What's that?"

"Well, it's lots of people all crowded on top of each other, trying to figure out ways to live together."

“What kind of people?”

“All the kinds.”

At the foot of their mountain, settlements were sparse, but in the distance he could just make out the lights of the city winking on, one by one.

“The lights are pretty,” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “It’s good to watch sunsets.”

“Not the sunset.” She stabbed a finger out from beneath her blankets. “Those little lights. Where the people are.”

He grunted, and circled the sled, checking to make sure all the straps were secure, that the carcass was still wrapped sufficiently and not trailing blood in the snow. He pulled the blankets a little more securely around the girl. Wiped her nose with a blanket edge.

“Why don’t you like people?” she said.

“I like you. You’re a person,” he said. “Some of the time, anyway.”

“And mom’s a person,” she said. 

“See? I like people,” he said.

"But you don't like going out there. Where people are on top of each other."

"Well, I don't mind meeting a person like a bear or a moose in the woods. It’s nice to see them from a distance. Maybe you get close enough to wave. But you put a lot on the line when you get too close.”

She thought about that. He bent to retrieve the rope and looped it over his shoulder.

"I would get close to a bear. Because I'm brave," she said.

"Yes, you are," he said. "But then it's my job to protect you, and make sure you don't get too close. To keep you safe." 

He paused.

"The truth is, sometimes it's me I'm keeping safe. Your dad is a man who likes to stay on his mountain."
“I like your mountain. But I want to go down there,” she said. “I think I might like it, too.”

“I went down there once, when I was younger," he said. "It’s where I met your mother.”

“But then you came back up here.”

“Yes.” 

"Well, I would go down there, and nobody would scare me. Because I would be a grown woman. Maybe even bigger than you!"

She climbed off the sled, shedding the blankets. She stamped her feet and clapped her mittened hands together, a four-year-old’s version of calisthenics .

“I can walk the rest of the way,” she said. “I’m am getting big, you know.”

“I know.” She tramped in huge steps around the sled and towards the cabin, which was just visible through the trees, the glow from its windows a tiny beacon of comfort and warmth.

He glanced again out over the valley. And then smiled, as he heard in the distance a small voice shout “Rawr! I’m a bear!”

What to do with your old National Geographic collection

Recently my in-laws asked if we'd like their old National Geographic magazines. It turns out they've been saving them since Columbus reached the Americas.

Our house is small, and we're pretty dang bad at finding appropriate storage places for things. We've still got 90% of our book collection in boxes, although I plan on that changing once escrow goes through on our house (my dreams are filled with full-wall built-in bookshelves). We almost passed on the collection, but then we were like, "but they're National Geographics!" So we took them. And then they sat around for a long while as we tried to figure out what to do with them.

Makeshift beds were made. Towers were built. Dangerous gymnastic stunts were performed with enthusiasm and daring. At which point we had to recognize the unwise use of stacks of National Geographic magazines as building blocks and play equipment.

I remember, decades ago, sitting at my parent's kitchen table, poring over the latest National Geographic magazine. I'd examine every page and imagine worlds far beyond the scope of my everyday life. There's magic in these things. Mystery. Adventure. Only yesterday, the plumber who came to fix our water heater saw our stack of National Geographics and waxed on about his own love affair with the magazine.

Perhaps most exciting of all was riffling through the pages to find the secret artifact nestled amidst articles on rain-forest spiders or new discoveries about Marco Polo's journeys. The neatly folded map is the cereal-box prize for the kid who has a little bit of Indiana Jones in her heart.

There's no doubt my four-year-old is an adventurer, so much so that she puts this home-body dad to shame. I'm working on living up to her craving for adventure. Baby steps, you know? In the meantime, this homage to her childhood and my own is what we came up with for my daughter's room:

I know that not every map is created or even accepted by the people who reside within the (sometimes arbitrary) "boundaries" that a map describes. And a thoughtful play like Brian Friel's
"Translations" complicates even the practice of naming and labeling on maps, charts and historical and cultural analyses. Yet even accepting those qualifications, I identify with Gilbert H. Grosvenor's (the first full-time editor of National Geographic magazine) thoughts on the volume of meaning, of imagination, and of creativity to be appreciated in these works of art as efforts to understand the world we live in.

"A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams."

- Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Editor of National Geographic from 1899 -1954

The Jabberwocky

If you've been around a while, you've probably noticed that I'm a little curmudgeonly about holidays and parties and anything that involves interaction with other people. But despite all the things that make me twitch, there's something I always look forward to on Halloween.

Every year we try to do a project, something that we'll remember and care about years down the road, something more than just a cute costume. Last year my three-year-old made it through the entirety of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. Dang, I was proud of her. The year before that, my daughter was the star of her own Halloween horror story.

This year, my four-year-old pirate princess takes a Jabberwocky's head for a prize. *

You're welcome.

*No mythical creatures were harmed in the making of this video.

So long as we are dirty, we are pure

"All of earth is crammed with heaven

And every bush aflame with God

But only those who see take off their shoes."

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My daughter's birth marked a landfall after nine long months of a watery existence. Little bit by bit, each additional day she was in the womb, she became a little less fish and a little more mammal.

Sometimes, even four years later, it seems as though she's still trying to make up for her sloshing fetal isolation from terra firma. When she gleefully kicks up the dust beneath her feet, I imagine an ocean-weary mariner whose feet unexpectedly hit dry ground after so many days at sea.

She wants nothing more than to wriggle her toes in it; to savor its taste in her mouth; to pour it over her own head in a perverse mockery of acceptable cleansing rituals. But when I watch her enthusiastic, gritty exploration of the world around her, it strikes me that there is something cleansing in shucking protective barriers and getting dirty. Despite my declared love of nature, despite our move to a rural mountain town, I still spend far too much time with a window between me and the world. My four-year-old is doing her best to cure me of that problem.

*          *          *

At our local public library, there's a song that the kids sing during story time. It goes,

Each of us is a flower,

growing in life's garden.

Each of us is a flower,

we need the sun and rain.

Sun, shine your warmth on me.

Moon, cool me with your night.

Wind, bring the gentle rain.

Earth, take my roots down deep.

It's one of those cutesy songs that I don't want to admit enjoying. I'd be okay if most nursery rhymes and children's songs faded into obscurity. Yet I can't deny there is not much that is better than watching a bunch of three or four-year-olds perform a choreographed dance while crooning "each of us is a flower . . ."

*          *          *

There are treasures down there beneath the dirt. Bottlecaps, old nails, crumbling pieces of brick and ancient tile work and pottery. Worn pennies and forgotten plastic bracelets. Little rocks that could be hidden gems and big rocks that could be prehistoric fossils.

"Getting buried," her new favorite activity

As an adult, I too rarely stoop to break the surface of the ground I walk. But now, excavating a moat and castle, I relive my own childhood archaeological adventures. It feels good to sweat through my shirt, to imagine what's under the next layer of earth, to see our mountain grow taller.

And it feels good to have my daughter by my side. She digs with her own pink shovel, inadvertently throwing dirt back into the hole I'm laboring over. She bends to pluck curious objects before they're lost to the settling soil. She scoops handfuls of dirt and rubs them over her skin like some luxurious moisturizer. And when we're done, she's the very best buried treasure a scurvy pirate dad could find.

*          *          *

Our neighbor, a spry eighty-year-old in a boonie hat and gardening gloves, watches from the back fence.

"What's that yer working on?" he says.

My daughter and I survey our territory, the moat and the castle mound that is currently a temporary home to assorted trucks, dolls, and transplanted flowering weeds.

"We're just digging!" shouts my daughter, waving her shovel triumphantly. 

"Are you gonna plant something?" he asks uncertainly. "Tomatoes?" 

"Not yet," I say, slowly looking around. "Just digging. For fun." 

"Yeah! For fun!" shouts my daughter, emptying a cup of dirt over her head. 

"Huh," he says, and turns away, shaking his head. 

Alan, our neighbor, is a gardening fiend. He can't wait until we stop foolin' about and start growing things. Which we fully intend. It's on our to-do list. Definitely in our 10-year plan. Living an hour from a reasonably-sized grocery store, it starts to make a lot of sense to grow things ourselves.

But for a little while, we're pretty okay with digging for the sake of digging. With examining roly-poly bugs and watching neat lines of ants trooping along the bottom of our trench. With laying on a pile of dirt and watching the clouds go by. With carving canyons with shovels and kitchen implements and with building tiny civilizations on the cliff edges. With getting so dirty that a shake of our clothes leaves a cloud of dust wafting through the air, and perpetually having dirt under our fingernails, a keepsake and reminder to get outside again soon.

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions . . . mud pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

-Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1870

Feel the burn!

Last weekend I ran the Bakersfield 10K Volkslauf for my fifth straight year. I didn't really train much in the "preseason," since we're in the middle of trying to buy a house and, well, because laziness. I almost didn't show on race day, but finally dragged myself to the starting line for the sake of continuity. And because velociraptors. My daughter, enthusiastic about my athletic goals (or lack thereof), has taken it upon herself to help me get back in shape:

She's a tough taskmaster.

I used to try this same maneuver several years back when she was ten or fifteen pounds lighter, and I was ten or fifteen pounds more muscular. If I'm gonna be able to still manage it in several more years, I've obviously got to up my game. It's daunting, but dang-it, I'm gonna make it happen. When I think of a father-daughter obstacle racing team, I can already feel the pre-race butterflies flapping around excitedly in my stomach. Next year, at almost 6, she'll be the perfect age to start.

So, challenge accepted. I'm feeling the burn.

In your image, orange, the world was made

Lunchtime. I consider the oranges at the bottom of our refrigerator. A friendly neighbor unloaded them on us after a weekend of harvesting, and they practically spill from the clear plastic bin. My four-year-old is happy to announce to friends and strangers met on daily walks that oranges prevent scurvy and that scurvy is something pirates and even regular people really ought to avoid. 'Cause it'll "make you dead." Lately, though she's happy to talk about that citrusy goodness in relation to pirates, this kid has been refusing oranges as a snack. And we have a lot of them.

I take a gamble and begin peeling two oranges. She says "yuck!" and contorts her face in exaggerated expressions of disgust which escalate into melodramatic demonstrations of extreme pain. So I take a break and we go to the internet so I can read her some poetry about oranges. Kids dig poetry, right?

Neruda's persuasive words notwithstanding, my daughter will not be moved. "That's nice," she says. "But I still won't eat any orange." Well. I tried.

I make my way through the segments of one orange, separating each crescent landmass from its companions. I handle the textured bumps and protrusions of a piece of peel, and form a continent from it. I show my daughter where we live in North America. I make a Gulf of Mexico with my thumbnail. I sliver off a piece for Hawaii. As I carve out a piece for Central America my daughter absentmindedly grabs an orange segment and pops it in her mouth. I pretend not to notice. With the aid of a map from a National Geographic, I carve Canada and South America, Africa and Scandinavia, Australia and India. This is becoming a project, and we're enjoying it.

The orange segments disappear, one by one, into her mouth, until all that remains is the shell of the world that once was, the outline of the multitudes it contained.

With a spare lamp we become a sun and cross the face of the earth, waking it with the first rays of dawn and letting it fall into a slumbering darkness.

Each orange consumed offers a brief overwhelming shot of both bitter and sweet, one besting the other but never eliminating it. 

Inseparable the two tastes exist, one the greater and one the lesser. And all packed together into the ever diminishing, juicy heart of the orange. 

In the end, with all the pieces swept together in a final messy Pangaea, the pieces approximate but don't quite recapture the wholeness of their original. We sweep away the remains of this world, and pull another from the bin.

Edit: This post ended up hitting the front page of Reddit, which was kind of crazy. For a few days, it seemed like the entire internet was scolding me for 1. my strained metaphors, and 2. using a Mercator Projection map as a model. Both points are well taken. I've got a weakness for metaphors, and I just hope that my kids someday find my grasping, sometimes overwrought imagery endearing, the same way I (sometimes) miss my dad's puns. And as far as the Mercator Projection: never again. I promise.

And, more recently, I worked an orange peel into a map of the United States, another laborious but fun project to share with my daughter. 

Showers

 

Arachniphilia

In the middle of the night, my four-year-old knelt down by my bed, tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered into my ear.

Her: "Daddy, I'm scared. It's so dark." 

Me, (trying to remember where I am and whispering so as not to wake my wife): "Um. Okay.         Let's, uh, go back to your bed and I'll sing you some songs." 

Her: "Okay."

Once she's back in bed, I lay down next to her and we sing quiet duets of "Row, row, row your boat," and "Twinkle twinkle little star," and Diana Ross' "If we hold on together."

I pause a moment as I feel a spider crawl across my bare foot. I flick it away from me.

My daughter: "Daddy! Was that a spider!?" 

Me: "Yes. But don't worry, I got rid of it." 

Her: "But it looked like a baby! You don't hurt baby spiders. You take care of them (this seems to be a pattern)! Baby spiders are my favorite!"

I sigh. A minute later, we're both on our hands on knees looking for the baby spider, and upon finding it, my daughter marches me to the front door where I deposit it gently outside.

My daughter: "I'm not scared anymore. Goodnight, dad." 

Me: "Goodnight. I love you." 

Her: "I love you too. And I love baby spiders." 

Me: "Okay."

I finally crawl back into bed, and all I can dream about it eight-legged crawly things. I'm pretty sure my daughter and I are sharing dreams.

And when I wake up and pull aside my covers, I kid you not, a spider (very much not a baby) scampers out of my bed.

It's a little frightening the way a kid's dreams, if nurtured, become reality.

_________________________________

The next day, we had more spider conversations on the walk home from pre-school:

Her: "Dad, do spiders talk?" 

Me: "Probably. Or, at least they use body language." 

Her: "Hmm. Well, I want to look up on the internet how to talk spider language. 'Cause I want to ask a spider to be my pet. Lately they just keep running away from me."

Keep on running spiders. Keep on running.

Syrup in my bed, Fly Girl, marriage and baby, spiky claws, crazy art

 

A father for the fatherless

Neal here. This is Lindsay's very first guest post on my blog. I held her off for as long as I could, but after two years of blogging, she finally wore down my defenses. Which, coincidentally, is also the narrative arc of our courtship and marriage. Ha! I kid (not really, it's actually pretty accurate). She's a great writer, and is in fact the one who first encouraged me to start writing personal essays. Is it weird that one of the ways my wife and I connect is to exchange essays and then edit together in knock-down, drag-out sessions of metaphorical fisticuffs? I'm sure it's normal. Anyway, right here's an example of why I decided to marry her; this girl's got a soul in her, and it's hard not to want to be a better person when you're with her. I wrote a piece around Father's Day last year that detailed my experiences assisting my wife's research with a different vulnerable population. I'm proud of my wife, and I'm proud to showcase this piece, 'cause it's a powerful reminder that no matter your position in life, you gotta fight to make a difference, and that however distant redemption seems, it never disappears.

______________________

There is barely an inch of uncovered space in the Resource Center where I work. Flyers advertising school lunch programs and community health screenings obscure the glass window in the front door. Clipboards of blue, tan, and salmon colored papers greet clients as they enter. Someone asks if I have any scholarship applications. I sift through a thick manila folder. How about a bus schedule? I pull one off the tack board hanging above my desk. Can I get a dog license? Sure, just fill out this form. Diapers? It’s an emergency! I grab my key to the supply closet. I want to quit smoking, can you help? I lead them to a magazine stand labeled Smoking Cessation Programs. I’m worried that my son was molested. First, let me close the door. Now, tell me everything, as I pull out a Suspected Child Abuse Report. At the Resource Center, we don’t tell people what we do. We ask them what they need because, chances are, we can help.

But the help isn’t free. The currency we exchange is paperwork. I greet each client, shake hands, show them into my office, and proceed to complete forms with titles like:

The titles sound so sterile, so clinical. Just the core data elements, please. Nothing superfluous. Tell us a story? God forbid.

But it turns out that stories are what 68-year-old Italian men do. I knew right off Marty wasn't from around here. With my office just across from the receptionist’s desk, I hear clients before I see them, and a Brooklyn accent sticks out like a sore thumb in a place that’s nearly 3000 miles away on the opposite coast.

In my three months of working at the Resource Center, I've noticed that the desperation the client feels is directly proportional to the number of people they tell their story to as they enter the front office. While I finish up my previous client’s paperwork, I hear Marty’s voice moving around the room, barely a pause to draw breath. To the receptionist, he details the unexpected drug bust on his niece, which led to the heart attack, which led to the month-long hospitalization. To the quiet client waiting for her appointment, he exclaims, "I had no idea my niece was into that stuff, you know! It’s crazy!" To the Sparkletts delivery man, collecting our empty bottles, Marty explains, “It’s been a month since I seen my Godson -- that’s as long as we been apart his whole life.”

Sometimes it takes a while to understand just what a client is asking for. It's understandable; when life is spinning out of control, it can be hard to figure out what will stabilize it. But as he sat down in my office, Marty told me exactly what he was there for.

"My Godson was taken away on account a his mom doin' drugs -- they found needles and all kinds of crazy stuff in her room -- and I need to get 'im back.  I need the social worker to fax me the paperwork here and then I need you to help me fill it out, make sure I'm doin' it right cause he's been away from me for over a month on account a me goin' to the hospital for my heart attack. The shock's what did it. The police come busting into my house -- and I'm retired law enforcement, mind you -- and search all the rooms. They haul Barb right off and I can't believe the things they're pullin' out of her room. I had no idea. And while I'm in the hospital just tryin' to survive, Barb ups and signs away her rights. So the state's got Mike now but I gotta get him back. Ya see what I mean?"

It wasn't long before I had the paperwork in hand.

Verification of Relative or Non-Relative Extended Family Member (NREFM)

 Application for Assessment of Relative/NREFM Home

Just three short pages, about 36 questions, to explain why you should be the one to love and care for a child. I hand the papers to Marty but he puts his hand up to block them. “See, I need you to do it,” Marty says, a hint of pleading in his mostly matter-of-fact tone. “We gotta get everything just right. Will you write for me?”

No problem, I think. Paperwork is what I do. I read aloud the first question and set to work squeezing his narrative into the space provided.

"Michael Jonathan Bricker. But we called him Mikey from day one. I was there from the time he was born, you know. He came home to my house and I've been with 'im ever since. I used ta . . . ."

"It's today. He turns 13 today. 3/22/2001. I can't believe I don't getta be with 'im on his birthday. I talked to the social worker and said I gotta speak with 'im. They let me call 'im but when I heard his voice I just broke down. I couldn't even talk. I just bawled. I can't believe I'm not with 'im for his birthday, he's thir . . . ."

He breaks off in quiet sobs. I look up from the paperwork and instinctively stretch my hand toward him. But I stop halfway there, resting it on the file cabinet that separates us. It's still at least a foot from being anywhere near to a consoling touch. After a decade working with prisoners, who were shackled to avoid physical contact, I'm still grappling with how to reach out.

Brief description of your relationship to child

I stare at the paper. I have four and a half lines to distill from Marty the special ways he comforted his infant Godson; how he had to bend his  6' 7" frame in half as he held the hand of a toddler learning to walk; how he walked the preschooler to classes everyday because "he has some learning problems but he's hangin' in there"; how he drove the teenager to and from high school right up until the day the cops burst in.

“He’s been my whole world, you know,” Marty concludes. I wonder if that description is brief enough for the powers-that-be.

"Oh, yeah. I'd take care a 'im forever. I saw my niece. I says, 'Barb, why'd you sign over your rights so fast? You don't give up on your own baby.' She said, 'So I have to hear this from you?' Damn right, you do! You don’t give up your kid for drugs. I don't care if they're 2 or 62, they're your baby forever. How does she not get that? I'll take care a 'im forever."

I'm blinking back tears. That's another thing I haven't figured out yet: do I let them see me cry? It's hard to do paperwork through welled-up tears, and drips will smear the ink. Do I need to look unphased, to instill confidence that things will be okay? Or can I show them that I'm a little afraid that the thing they want, more than they’ve ever wanted anything, might never be? Just released from the hospital, disabled, living with a friend, not realizing drugs were infiltrating his home until the cops came knocking. I'm no custody expert, but these don't sound like good signs.

One and a half lines, this time. Barely enough room to say, "Please, I'll do anything to be with my Mikey again"; no room to post your whole heart on the page.

We finish up with his signature and I prepare the fax. The space between the faxing and the confirmation feels interminable, his and Mikey’s whole future hanging in the balance. I assure him that I'll call the social worker to make sure she received the fax. I know she did, and he doesn't ask me to call, but it's all I can do and so I'll do it. As he gets up to leave, he tells me matter-of-factly, "I'm gonna hug you." He wraps his hulking arms around me -- I'm not sure I've ever been held in such long arms and I can feel how powerful they still are -- and whispers, "You're an angel," as he kisses my cheek with a loud and purposeful muah. He turns to leave and I still haven’t moved. Should I have hugged back? What were my parting words? Did he see my smile? I can still hear him repeating thank you, thank you, thank you as he hobbles out of the office, and I can’t stop smiling. Finally, I take a shaky breath and sit down to finish my paperwork.

What to do when you find a black widow

When we moved up into the mountains nine months ago, we knew that there would be an increase in certain dangers over our suburban environment. We nixed the first rental I fell in love with after the real estate agent warned that its location up on the edge of the mountain would attract rattlesnakes and that bobcats and mountain lions might think our daughter looked tasty.

Now that we live a little further down the mountain, and aside from the mild surprise of bear cubs living under our deck and our neighbor who feeds a community of raccoons from his front porch, our run-ins with wildlife have been pretty benign. The stray wind-scorpion has been enough to keep us pleasantly on our toes.

But in the last few months, I've noticed webs and what appear to be egg sacs in the corners of our garage. De-cluttering the space and cleaning up the webs went on my list of things to do, a list which might also be called my "list of things I probably won't do anytime soon."

That is, until the evening this week that I found this beauty hanging out next to our washing machine:

Yeah, that's a black widow. You can tell because when you see it, your heart stops beating for a second, you break out in sweats, and you have to fight the urge to run screaming. Individually, these symptoms might not be conclusive, but when you put them all together: yep, it's a widow. Here it is again, with a banana for scale:

After stepping away and calming myself, I found a jar and leather gloves and collected the evil-looking specimen. My wife found me some time later, and curiously watched as I repeatedly picked up the jar to examine it closely and then lost my nerve, put the jar back down, and stepped back several paces to morosely consider my family's imminent demise.

"Whatcha got there?" my wife asked. "A black widow," I said, feeling like I was pronouncing a death sentence. "I think there's more of 'em out there, too." I tried not to think about how numerous and tiny spider babies are. (I'm still trying not to think about it.)  

"Oh, we used to have those all the time in our shed growing up. Just try not to touch 'em." she said. "Anyway, did you finish the laundry?"

I tried to tell her that it was while doing laundry that I'd found this minion of Satan, this death-dealer, and that it was unlikely I'd ever be able to do laundry again. But she raised her eyebrow and told me not to be a baby. And to finish the laundry.

I debated flushing the widow after I'd gotten a few good pictures as proof of my near-death experience. But then I decided that if we're in widow country, I'd better take this opportunity to educate my daughter about things that are dangerous and that we never, never touch. Had I tried this talk with her a year or two ago, it probably would have backfired. Telling a toddler not to touch something pretty well guarantees it. But this four-year-old of mine, she's really growing up. The best I can do is teach her right and then give her opportunities to demonstrate that her instincts for self-preservation are finally kicking in.

Of course, when I showed her the spider the next morning, I probably could have predicted her reaction:

Her: "Oh, wow! I just love it so much!" 

Me: "Did you understand when I said that it was dangerous? 

Her: "Yes, but it's so beautiful! I love the red on its body. That's a pretty color!" 

Me: "If it bites you, you might die." 

Her: "I want to name it Noodle! Can I keep it?!"

Sigh. I finally extracted a promise from her that if she found any similar spiders, she wouldn't touch them. But she didn't promise that she wouldn't name them or love them. I can't help feeling that there's some validity to her attitude; it's just hard as a dad to reserve any appreciation for hazardous things, things that threaten the well-being of your kid.

But that's life, I guess, right? The black widow may as well be a metaphor for the risks that we'll all encounter. Life: it's beautiful, and it's dangerous.

Even more, the black widow is a metaphor for raising kids. When my daughter was a newborn, a black widow's bite would have been horrific. In the first year or so, it seemed everything about this infant's environment was a threat. And since babies have very bad judgment, it was almost silly how many of those threats could be lethal. Grapes, grapes were our greatest fear.

But at four years old, she's making big strides in discernment. Many of the things that were so dangerous when she was an infant are not nearly so dangerous now. If a widow bit her, it'd still be bad. But there's very little chance it would be lethal. As with so many other risks that we've feared, the danger of the widow decreases little bit by bit with each year. The risks aren't negligible; but they somehow become manageable enough that after safely reaching adulthood ourselves, we parents actually decide to bring more fragile souls into this dangerous world. The idea is that we'll be able to shield them just long enough for them to stop putting bugs in their mouths and knives in electrical sockets, and if we've done our job, they'll gradually be able to negotiate future dangers without needing our intervention.

In the meantime, yeah, I'm gonna be cleaning out our garage. But no matter how much I clean, there will still be black widows in the world, and I'm gonna try not to freak out, and instead take this moment to practice trust - trust that my growing girl can start negotiating some of the world's dangers for herself.

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UPDATE: In the two days since we found our widow, my four-year-old and I have talked a lot about Noodle and what makes her special. And frightening. And lovable. If we're sitting at my computer, she'll say, "type in 'spider'! I want to see more cute spiders!" or she'll say, "how do you spell 'spinneret'? NO, LET ME TYPE THE LETTERS!" And of course there's now all sorts of creepy-crawly bug art floating around the place now. Which is kind of cool. After she went to bed, I finished doodling out the spider diagrams I started with her to explain spider anatomy:

And yesterday, in the thick of all of our arachnid fever, we decided to have her visit the Insect Lore Bugseum in Bakersfield, after which she brought home her very own Praying Mantis egg case (bought buy her Tio), also called an "ootheca." Which, I assure you, is quite amusing to hear a four-year-old pronounce.

I don't always tame my fear and capture a black widow and research the bejeezus out of it and plan appropriate safety and science lectures for my kid, but when I do, it sure can be a lot of fun.

A note on black widows: After my initial freak-out (they're killers! BURN EVERYTHING!), I did a little research and came up with this page on Black Widow and Other Widow Spiders from UC Davis' Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. It helped calm me down, and gave some good scientific advice about the best ways to manage infestations.

Stab