WHO’S AFRAID OF ----?

Isn’t everyone afraid of something, some things? If not, you can’t join my club. Right now at 3 a.m. I am lying in bed, afraid to get up without a first line to start my writing day. How nervous I am thinking maybe I am finished, dried up, blocked forever, but this is nothing compared to my really, really big fear.

How or when my world changed I can’t imagine as I used to love to lie on the grass, watch the white fluffy clouds, see Santa Claus, a wolf chasing a cat. Every gust of wind was as wonderful and inspiring as going to a museum. Often I took my art pad with me and sketched what I saw. And then the sky vanished, went so high I could no longer look upwards, can no longer look at a tall building from the pavement to the roof. Looking down is fine but not up. A psychoanalyst might, after my padding his pockets, believe he knows what happened but I decided long ago to just not look to the point of pain, and have saved a lot of money.

On a visit to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiori (the Duomo) in Florence, Italy, I regretted my being a skinflint. There were 20 strangers on my tour, all of us anxious to see as much as we could. Wherever we stopped, I kept our guide’s red parasol in sight but she had to lower it to go in the cathedral. We were one group out of maybe twenty, with guides speaking many languages. Within a few minutes of going in to the candlelit, marble building, I panicked. The guide was out of my sight and the dome was in it. Everyone was looking up, gaping, gawking at its size, its beauty, and I couldn’t look. Just watching every one else looking churned my stomach. I was about to either faint or vomit. Head down, eyes glued to the large marble blocks in the floor, I blindly reached the door we had come in, sat down on the steps, from which an officer chased me. I was sweating ice cubes but could not go back inside. With little alternative, I paced, watched the bronze door as group after group came out while others went in. Mine must have died inside. A half hour dragged by. In an hour hackles were growing on my back. Either my group went out the wrong door or I did. Taking the blame on myself, I started to walk to the bus parking lot but all the buses were the same color and I recognized noone and noone called my name. Dirty alleys, run down houses, crooked streets. I was lost. With very little Italian money in my purse I couldn’t stop a cab and if I did, my fear had erased the name of my hotel. Blisters were on every toe. Fear fed my pain.

And then I saw in the distance the cathedral spires. Bells were chiming, announcing sunset or my funeral. There, there, a red parasol and somebody sitting on the steps holding it. It was my Mother Theresa, my Savior. She ran towards me. I hobbled towards her. Oh, yes, she was angry. Oh, yes I apologized over and over.

In my hotel room I turned on the 25 watt lamp, looked in the cloudy mirror and scolded myself for being such a stupid person who now is more afraid of looking up than ever.

The flight home was long, tiring but beautiful as I looked down at the clouds, the ocean. Back in my USA I’ve made an important decision and an appointment with a psychologist. I’m not afraid. I’m doing it.