Aliens

I buy a fire blanket and a window ladder to reassure both of us. I start saying we’re so lucky like a mantra and a talisman.

Aliens exist, but I don’t tell my daughter this. She’s overtired, lying in her bed next to me, sobbing with the certainty that a spaceship will abduct her in the night. It’s the essential childhood fear—something is coming to separate her from everything she knows. I say all the comforting things (Daddy and I will never leave you, I’ll always be here, nothing bad is coming) but they sound a little hollow. It’s the essential problem with adulthood—I know all the unknowns. I read the news. Outside her window, I hear children screaming joyfully while they play. I follow a morbid train of thought and imagine for a moment the joy removed from their screams. I picture our technicolor world reduced to the piles of gray rubble I see daily in AP photographs. All of a sudden, my daughter’s fears seem so logical, and my replies so dishonest. My first lie is that aliens are not real. My second lie is that I can guarantee her safety. 

We’re so lucky, I say to my husband after I read the news, but this rings hollow too. I once attended a graduation party during which the grad’s mom repeated We’re SO lucky every ten minutes. She was wearing a Lily Pulitzer dress in her lakeside mansion. After a while, the profusion of luck started to feel tacky. There was both too much of it and not enough to go around.

I find some pictures of cartoon aliens and show them to my daughter. See, they’re actually kind of silly! I tell her. She doesn’t buy it. The next day I find her hiding behind a chair, paralyzed with fear by the cartoon alien that’s appeared in her Disney show. Remember, aliens aren’t real, I lie to her as I turn off the TV. I pressed a button and made the bad thing go away. If only it were that simple.

It’s a month later and my daughter has a new fear (fire) and we have a new president (ugh). These developments have reduced my ability to brush her off, because I can’t pretend fires aren’t real, and now I’m anxious too. “Did you remember to turn off your iron, Mama?” she asks one night at 10pm, fighting tears as she emerges from her bedroom. I’m pretty sure I did, but I check again just in case. I too have started feeling like something hot has been plugged in for too long. I expect to feel that way for the next four years. 

Someday I’ll have to tell her that aliens do indeed exist (...right??) and that fires are just as destructive as she imagines. Someday I’ll have to show her that I’m afraid too. But tonight, after confirming twice that my iron is nowhere near being plugged in, I reassure her that all is well and snuggle with her until she falls asleep. I crack her closet door wider, to let more light in. Then I lie in my bed and, instead of ruminating on all the unknowns, try to think of five things I’m grateful for, to let more light in. 

I buy a fire blanket and a window ladder to reassure both of us. I start saying we’re so lucky like a mantra and a talisman. “What a rainy night! I feel so lucky to be in our warm house together,” I announce at dinner, hoping that I can conjure up some gratitude for myself and then beam it via osmosis into my kids. 

Even as I tell myself that gratitude will help the anxiety, another part of me asks what I’m doing for those who aren’t as lucky. 

But my daughter is only six years old and a privileged child, so she does not have this complication. For now, she only cares about her own fears. She only wants me to reassure her that she’s safe. So I do, feeling so lucky and so delusional.