The Mother of All Fears
DONNA CAMERON
It’s been twenty-five years since my mother’s death, but I still hear her voice— occasionally, faintly—warning me to proceed with caution, go slow, avoid risk.
It’s a voice that accompanied me through much of my childhood and into my late teens. The world, she warned me, was not a safe place. There were dangers lurking in even the most benign corners. And there were neither guardian angels nor benevolent gods watching out for me. Trust me on this, she said. I’m telling you this for your own good. As a child, I took her words as gospel. In many ways, I became a scale model of her—timid and anxious, expecting disappointment, wary of unseen threats.
She was surely the most fearful person I have ever known. I noticed it more than ever after my father died, when I was eleven. Fear became her constant companion: fear of driving, fear of strangers, fear of public places, fear of venturing out. She had a titanic terror of dogs—any dogs, all dogs, even sleeping dogs—be they German shepherds or teacup poodles. Her fear of dogs was perplexing even to her. She couldn’t explain it—there were no memories of early, traumatizing canine encounters. There was just something about dogs. I came to suspect that dogs represented all her fears—beastly things she couldn’t understand and couldn’t control.
As children, my sister and I pleaded for a dog—a collie like our cousin had, a beagle like my best friend’s, a sociable mutt. On this she was adamant: “No dog . . . not ever.”
When it became clear that she would never relent, we reassessed and altered our objectives. We described to Mom the vast advantages of cats over dogs: no barking, just the soft meow and purr of a fluffy, little feline. A quiet companion, easy to care for. Eventually, we wore her down. With reluctance, Mom allowed us to get a kitten. We named her Mischief. I taught her to fetch. She followed me around just like my friends’ dogs did. For years, Mom and the cat eyed each other suspiciously, each certain the other schemed her demise.
Dogs aside, Mom’s biggest fears were of what the neighbors might say about her or her daughters, and the fear of losing said daughters. These, more than anything else, drove her cautious days and her vodka-fueled nights. While she fretted about anything that could possibly put us in harm’s way—climbing trees, riding in cars with boys, eating undercooked bacon—she also regularly admonished us to be on our best behavior and to never, ever talk about our family to others. I asked her once if we had secrets friends and neighbors mustn’t know about.
“Every family has secrets,” she said with a finality that invited no further discussion.
The one thing Mom wasn’t afraid of was dying. Life held no particular attraction for her. Unlike most of the adults I knew, she had no enthusiasms—no hobbies, no causes, no passionate—or even tepid—pursuits. She rarely expressed curiosity, likening inquisitiveness to snooping—a sin deadlier than gluttony or sloth.
She reminded us with some regularity that the wrong parent had died, telling us how much better our lives would be if our father had been left to raise us rather than she. Had she not been saddled with the responsibility of raising two children—whom her husband had wanted far more than she ever had—she would gladly have followed him into the void when cancer took him.
He left her with a job to do and it was one she took seriously, if not skillfully: raise these children and keep them safe. If there was more to that directive—offer them adventures, teach them to be curious, encourage them to take risks—her instruction manual was missing those pages. Having grown up without a mother herself, she often seemed to be at a loss for how to proceed. So, she advanced cautiously, haltingly—conveying to my pre-teen eyes an anxious determination to get this right: to keep us safe.
With some regularity, she demanded promises that we wouldn’t die before she did. I solemnly gave her my word, but even at eleven, I knew keeping that pledge was beyond my control. Still, I learned her vigilance, I became the cautious kid, the one who always buckled her seatbelt, who avoided roller coasters, and who said “no” more than she said “yes.”
I remember lying awake at night and imagining Dickensian scenarios in which my sister and I—now orphaned—are shuttled from family friends to distant relatives, to nineteenth-century workhouses. Oh, yes, I was my mother’s daughter, all right.
There were moments, though, in which I saw glimpses of other possibilities. I began to question whether my mother’s string of losses destined me for the same fate. Was shrinking from the world any way to live in it?
Her warnings faded when I went away to college, and afterward, when I launched myself into a career and a life in a distant state. I often forgot to be afraid. Sporadic now, her warnings came condensed in phone calls, or clustered in an occasional letter into which were tucked cautionary newspaper clippings:
Motorist attacked while stopping to ask for directions.
Fire started by unattended candle.
Passengers on flight sickened by unexplained fumes.
Despite her fears and warnings, she seemed to want to hear my stories of new experiences and adventures, of places she would never see and risks she would never take. She liked hearing about my travels. She just listened and offered quietly, “Be careful.”
I sent her postcards from Russia, brought her a carving from Jamaica, a necklace from Stockholm.
One crisp, autumn weekend, I was at Yellowstone National Park, a place I had always wanted to see. I had told Mom that I would be spending the weekend there while I was traveling for business in the area. True to form, she cautioned me about driving alone, talking to strangers, encountering bears, or injuring myself hiking. And, as always, I pledged to be careful and promised to call her.
Yellowstone couldn’t have been more perfect. The summer crowds were gone and there had already been a first snow of the season, but this particular October weekend was spectacular. As it was our habit to talk by phone on Saturday afternoons, I decided to call Mom from a pay-phone at the Old Faithful Visitor Center. Only steps from the celebrated geyser, if I craned my neck, I could just see a cluster of people waiting for its reliable and exuberant eruption. I was awed by my surroundings. I wanted to share this autumn gift and couldn’t wait to tell Mom about hiking in the sunshine, about the sulfuric hot springs, waterfalls, bison, and the never-ending expanse of trees surrounding me.
As soon as she answered, I started prattling on about my solo adventures in the Park. When I finally paused, she spoke.
“I’ve had some excitement today, too,” she said. “I was at the hairdresser this morning, sitting under the dryer, when a young man in a ski mask came in and robbed the place.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“No, he made Lowell and Louise get on the floor behind the counter, then he emptied the cash register. He was waving a gun around. Then he came down the length of the parlor and took wallets from everybody in the styling chairs and under the dryers—”
“Oh, my God! Are you okay?”
“—except me.”
“Except you, what . . .? You mean he didn’t take your wallet?”
“No, while he was robbing somebody else, I reached over and took my wallet out of my purse and dropped it into the wastebasket next to me. I’m surprised he didn’t hear the thud it made. Then I dropped my magazine on top of it. So, when he got to me, I told him I didn’t have a wallet. He didn’t believe me.”
“What did he do?”
“He grabbed my purse and dug through it, but there wasn’t anything but my make-up bag, my keys, cigarettes, and a crossword puzzle book. He asked me where I keep my money and I told him I didn’t bring any with me, that Louise just bills me for my weekly appointments. How was that for quick thinking?”
“He believed you?”
I heard her take a long drag on her cigarette, and then the familiar rattle of ice in her glass. Who was this person speaking to me in my mother’s voice?
“Well, he didn’t shoot me. He just went on to the woman next to me. He took jewelry, too, but I wasn’t wearing any. They were all crying.”
“You weren’t?”
“No, I was mad.”
I pictured the beauty shop Mom had been going to once a week for as long as I could remember. It was a long narrow space, flamingo pink, and redolent of shampoo and permanent wave solution. Along one side was a counter and styling chairs facing the mirrored wall, and along the other was a row of sinks and padded seats with hair dryers perched above. Next to each seat was a table holding an ash tray and a selection of the latest women’s magazines. It was a safe place where women chattered freely, overlooking the temporary disfigurement of curlers, chemicals, and unmade-up faces, for the knowledge that soon they would be styled and lacquered and attractive until the exercise was repeated seven days later.
“Mother, what were you thinking? He could have shot you. It was just a wallet,” I scolded her. She knew better. I knew she did. She had always taught us, “If anyone tries to rob you, just give them what they want. Don’t give them any reason to harm you. There’s no possession that’s worth risking your life for.”
My fear-riddled mother stood up to an armed gunman. What was she thinking?
“You could have been killed . . .” I wavered across exasperation, bafflement, and admiration.
“That’s what the officer said, too, when the police finally showed up. He said the kid was probably high on drugs. He said I shouldn’t have tried to hide my wallet, that it wasn’t worth risking my life over.”
“Well, he was right. That’s what you’ve always told us. I can’t believe you did that. You don’t carry that much money around. And whatever it was, it wasn’t worth the risk! You could have been killed!”
“Oh, it wasn’t the money. I didn’t care about that. It was the inconvenience. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to replace all my credit cards and my driver’s license.”
“Mother, you could have been killed!” Surely, there was more I should say, but this seemed to be all that would come out. I was dumbfounded. This woman, who freezes at the sight of an unleashed puppy, faced down an armed robber—because she couldn’t bear the inconvenience.
“The ladies in the beauty parlor said I was brave. I think the police officer thought so, too.”
“Well, yes, you were, but that doesn’t make you any less crazy.” I laughed. “I’m proud of you. Next time, though, promise me you’ll let ’em have your wallet.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be a next time.”
If there had been a next time, she would have done exactly the same thing. I know she would. I didn’t know how much of it was a newfound bravery, and how much was the fact that she’d rather die than be inconvenienced.
And maybe something else.
It was only later that I started to wonder if perhaps there might be other reasons for Mom’s reckless valor, if perhaps avoiding inconvenience was only part of the story that October day. In those few moments, as a masked gunman approached her, did she think maybe this was her way out? Was she ambivalent about the outcome? She faced him as fearlessly as she faced the prospect of her own death. And she stood him down. Maybe she stood death down, too.
Or perhaps she saw in those few moments an opportunity to invite some adventure into her well-restrained life . . . or a chance to not be afraid. I will never know what made her relax her lifelong vigilance and defy an armed robber.
It was only a few years later that she confronted her death with a bold enthusiasm that astonished her daughters and her medical team. It was as if in those last days she could finally relax. She had raised her girls to adulthood. She had passed the ultimate test. It was time to live for herself, and in a logic only she would embrace, that meant letting it all go. What came next was easy for her, and she made it easy for us.
I have spent years striving not to become my mother, not to recoil from risk or be paralyzed by fears. To a large degree, I have succeeded. When I hear those faint echoes of her voice, I cast off her warnings but I welcome her in my memory. She was the most fearful person I’ve ever known, yet all these years later, I hope I have her courage.
