Scareda

 I look after my grandson Jack on Wednesdays.  He’s two.  Last week he looked up at me  and said confidently “Scareda ants”  He’s recently learnt about being scared of things and the mileage it can get out of any attending adult.

The first time he was unquestionably afraid was on the beach.  It was exasperating because the beach is such a nice place to be with a little kid – so much space and sand to dig in.  But Jack gibbered with terror at the sight of the lapping sea.  He cried.  He hid his face in my lap and then begged his mother for a cuddle.  We made a big fuss and eventually screened off the sea with our bodies while he mistrustfully held some sand in his little fists.

I think he was pleased when he found a word for the seaside experience and “scareda” is now applied promiscuously to anything a bit odd like the giant ceramic Pro Hart ant brought back (against my wishes) from a holiday with my husband in Broken Hill.

“No you’re not” I said, and gave the horrid thing a kiss.  “It’s nice” and  he agreed to kiss it too.  So that was that.

I wonder where terrors come from and where they go.  I was terrified of a whole lot of things when I was a little girl in England – steam trains that hissed and howled -  the gas that went bang when you lit it – the appalling pulsing din of the London tube trains as they crossed the bridge over Turnham Green Terrace.  My grandmother would snarl with rage at my intransigent refusal to pass under the trembling roar.  She couldn’t understand that fear and I can’t now.

But some fears one grows out of  for no very good reason.  Because I was born just after the second world war I grew up, as we used to say “in the shadow of the Bomb”  There were Aldermaston Marches and slogans like “What do you do when the Bomb drops? Kiss your children goodbye.”  That frightened me very much.  I was morbidly curious about radioactive disease and made it my business to find out all the horrible symptoms.  I remember suddenly starting to cry on the platform of Earls Court Road station.

“What’s the matter now?” my mother said.  I couldn’t tell her that it was the sight of the red patent leather handbag slung over the arm of an elegant lady.  I was sure The Bomb would have dropped before I was old enough to have a handbag like that.  In fact of course I grew up and now have heaps of handbags. 

It is still a dangerous and some would say a doomed world but I hardly ever think about it now.  I wonder where the terror has gone?  Do we get braver as we grow up or just stupider?

Anyway I decided to try and wean Jacob from the “scareda” game.  It’s no way to spend a childhood.

“So you’re not scared of ants any more?”  He loved the sound of “any more” and stretched it out so it rose and fell.  “Not scareda ants ennny mooore”  I could see I was on a winning run and pursued my advantage.

“What about the beach?  Would you like to go to the beach again – with mummy and daddy and me too.  All of us?”

“No,” he said quietly and so I let it go.

But when he was going down for his nap and we couldn’t  locate the much loved dummy he said mournfully

“Dummy all gone.  No dummy ennny mooore.”

I cashed in on the moment and said

“Not scareda sea ennny moore?” and he laughed at the joke and repeated ”Not scareda sea any more”

Well the proof will be in the pudding I suppose and we haven’t been back to the beach since then but I live in hope.

I just noticed this morning that there is another glass ant in our garden. Graham’s been at it again. This one has been perched in a bromeliad and is reading a tiny little book.  I hate to say it but it just slightly gives me the creeps.  But I take a leaf out of Jack’s book and brace myself.  “Not scareda anything any more”  And it feels good.