Last night at our son's birthday party, we had an interesting conversation with a friend of his we'd met before. We ended up talking about childhood fears. We discussed water, spiders, bees, mirrors, and all the obvious scary stuff. But she had a friend whose child is afraid of wind. She said it's very difficult to reassure the child, as wind is everywhere and comes up unexpectedly. We all said we were spooked by thunderstorms, the threat of a tornado, and random acts of nature, but that seems a given. I mentioned being afraid of ventriloquists, due to seeing a Twilight Zone episode as a child. But I really, really am afraid of mirrors at times. I'm afraid there will be somebody else reflected when I look. My husband admitted he's afraid no one will be there. Up until that instant, I'd never known that about him, and we've been married 41 years.
It was a strange, but fascinating conversation, and we enjoyed it and each other, even though we were her parents' ages. It was something about not filtering what we were talking about, but being really honest, even though we hardly knew each other. I love it when a connection occurs that I don't expect and have no way of orchestrating, and the flow is natural and therefore genuine. We didn't do "party talk", and I don't know anything more about her really, but I KNOW something very real about who she is, and her ability to engage with people that others her age would dismiss. It was a delightful feeling.
No comments:
Post a Comment