Brave chickens
Friday, October 19, 2012 
My girls — No longer this crazy but now twice as brave.
The spookiness of the season seems to be taking its toll on my grandsons.
Mac, who's 16 months old and has been sleeping through the night for quite some time, has awakened screaming in the middle of the night for more than a week now. After ruling out illness, teething, earaches and pains, the only logical reason may be nightmares attributed to spider and ghost decor, plus viewings of Mickey's House of Villains at Bubby's side.
And Bubby, who loves those cartoons of Donald and Mickey braving scary places and villains in his current favorite DVD, doesn't fare as well with his own made-up tales. Megan said Bubby asked for a flashlight a few evenings ago and for Megan to join him in a spooky storytelling session. Only, once Bubby started telling the spooky made-up tale he hoped to share, he declared, "No, I gotta stop! It's too scary!" Megan tried to convince him that as he was the storyteller, the degree of spookiness was completely up to him, yet Bubby refused to go on.
Megan's concerned a bit by Mac's fears, chuckles a bit at Bubby's. I told her to consider what a chicken she was as a child. This is the daughter who, all the way up until leaving for college, would literally run to and from the bathroom if she had to pee in the middle of the night and who used a night light up until she got married. Heck, I'm pretty sure she still uses a night light—disguised as two baby monitors she swears she can't yet give up, for the boys' sake, of course.
Megan is a chicken. Her boys clearly take after her.
In so many other ways, though, Megan is far from a chicken, and brave far beyond what I ever expected of my chicken little girl. She was the first daughter to go far away to a college where she knew no one, a place seven hours from home. She also was the first to move far away from the family home after college to make her own home with her husband. And she was the first to bravely run an official half marathon race—a challenge she asked her sisters to do along with her, for their first times, in just a few weeks.
Her sisters accepted the invitation and will fly to the desert the first weekend of November to run 13.1 miles with Megan. Which shouldn't surprise me as my girls—typically so very different in so very many ways—are very much the same when it comes to bravery in the face of challenge and opportunity.
My youngest, Andrea, has from day one done crazy, daring acts that forever live in family lore. Things like the time she unexpectedly jumped from our boat while no one was looking, right into the cold waters of a mountain lake where we vacationed, just to shock us all. Or touched her tongue to the frozen wrought iron stair railing to see if it really would stay stuck to it (it did). And like yesterday, when she flew off—alone—on yet another solo vacation to parts of the country she's not yet seen.
My oldest, Brianna, may not (yet) take vacations on her own, but she regularly stares down fear and faces challenges of other sorts. One example: This weekend she is riding a bike down Pikes Peak. Yes, you read that right. Early tomorrow morning, Brianna and a friend will, starting at the summit, hop on bicycles—not motorcycles—and pedal down the 14,000-foot-plus mountain. For fun. Crazy, crazy, crazy. And brave, I must admit.
How that happened—how my daughters ended up brave in so many ways—I have no clue. They definitely didn't get it from me. They didn't get it from Jim, either, to be sure, as we're both rather chicken-like in myriad ways of our own.
So when it comes to Bubby and Mac being scared—whether at Halloween or of harrowing acts in the future—I'll continually advise them to look to their mommy and aunts as role models on how to be brave, how to feel most any fear yet do most anything anyway.
For models of bravery are what my daughters have been to me, and what they will always be.
Regardless of how long they use a nightlight.
Today's question:
What about Halloween used to (or still does) make a chicken of you?
Reader Comments (11)
Kudos to your very brave girls!
You're not alone in the chicken coop. I'm still afraid of Halloween 'haunted houses' with costumed actors and special effects. How do I know Jason, Freddy, or Michael didn't sneak in while nobody was looking? I'm not going there.
Boo...Happy Friday!
Halloween decorations didn't bother me when they were ghosts and skeletons and cartoonish. The popularity of rats as decor completely terrifies me, as I mistake them for the real thing. I cannot wait for November!
You raised three amazing daughters, each in their own way!
I think you're far braver than you give yourself credit for. It takes all kinds of bravery to be a mom - much less a young one, as you were. And we can't forget that you took this new career leap and are bravely staying the course. And Jim, well...let's admit it. He HAD to be brave to spend so many years as the only man in a house full of women. ;-)
I HATE haunted houses. HATE them. A lot. I haven't gone to one since I was a teenager.
Rats and haunted houses? I'm so with you guys—though haunted houses are a wee bit more scary to me, I must say, for exactly NonnieKelly's reasons. Plus, you just never know if the guy carrying the chainsaw (there's always one of them!) is truly psycho and replaced the fake chainsaw with a real one, unbeknownst to his supervisors.
Thanks for the kind words, Amber. Hard to feel brave about it when it's scared the hell out of me for various reasons from day one—parenting AND this whole freelance writing/blogging thing. So I appreciate that, my friend.
I always refused to babysit on Halloween -- which should be obvious to anyone who has ever seen the movie!
LOVE that picture! I admit to being weird in that I love scary movies -- the Stephen King kind not the Chainsaw murder kind but I am terrified of Haunted Houses. Worst experience of my long ago teenage life was going to the Hollywood Wax Museum, that place scared the (curse) out of me! I don't mind the Haunted House at Disneyland -- it is fun and entertaining but when characters really come to life and start chasing me -- I am so out of there! I have never and will never go to Knott's Scary Farm! Happy Friday!
I have never been a fan of haunted houses or scary movies.....I like the kids in their costumes part of Halloween but have no interest in the scary stuff.
I loved the stories about your girls. Isn't is fun to see the people our kids grow up to be.
I'm scared Freddy Krueger will jump from behind a tree and demolish me when I'm outside at night for ANY reason, whether it's Halloween or not.
And the picture of my beautiful grand-daughters gone crazy (above) scares me, too...what if their faces get stuck like that?!
I too am just mindlessly scared of haunted houses (and rats/mice) and the whole zombie thing the kids are doing baffles me to no end.I will handle breeding studs and mares that act out but no mental scary stuff
That is one pretty hilarious and scary picture of your girls! I think they get their braveness from their mom.....who is one brave lady.
I don't do haunted houses or even scary movies and especially do not like spiders....real and fake!
How wonderful that your girls take up such wonderful challenges.
Halloween was never celebrated in New Zealand when I was little, just starting to become popular now. We do however celebrate Guy Fawkes, nothing scary about that, except when I was
little was running around with a sparkler that went out, I went straight into a tree, not sure if I knocked myself out.