Fear

I looked and searched and tried to find something Halloweenie to write about. Was I afraid of spiders? Not really. Some are pets around the outside of my doors. They are cute, fuzzy, with bright shiny black eyes of different sizes and resemble small black grain combines. They can jump like fleas and generally spend their time hunting flies. They are a marvel to watch. Then there is the giant wolf spider that lives under my TV cabinet. Try as I may, I cannot seem to get him killed. Every once in a while, in the dead of night, I catch him racing back to under the TV cabinet. Where he's been and who he's been hunting I have no idea. Generally, my house is insect free so I don't know what critters he's eating. I am consoled with the fact that I haven't ever seen TWO wolf spiders so I expect he's a very lonely guy.

Was I afraid of snakes? Nope. I've got my own method of dealing with them and it includes a pony irrigation shovel. Snakes can be quite exhilarating.

Afraid of mice? No--a deep-seated disgust for them bordering on obsession--yes.

The dark? No, I can see pretty well in the dark. It feels like a dark blanket.

The sun? Maybe. It is pretty hot out and my skin burns easy.

People. Yes. I don't understand them very well. They seem to be hooked up by some power of telepathy that lets them all communicate with few words. My hookup is blocked. I don't get how they all know things I don't when I was in the same room or converstation.

Alone. No, I crave alone time. A minimum of an hour a day or I'm really ugly with my fellow humans--including myself.

Then it hit me. Fear drives me and has all of my life. Thats why I feel the need to learn, to examine, to understand. I have always owned a car big enough to live in if I had to. I learned to understand money and finance because I fear having no money for basics. I know how to make a fire from sticks and other ways, because I fear having no heat. I fear not being able to buy clothes so I learned how to make them. I fear not having food, so I learned how to get it, kill it, preserve it, and understand how to make plants or animals grow. I fear sickness, so I learned some healing skills and arts. I fear accidents so I learned about emergency medicine. I feared not having tools so I learned how to make them or make do. Writing has opened up all new avenues for fear. I fear success, for what will I do with that? I fear I have no talent and people are too kind to tell me to hang up my pen and go swimming. I fear that I have only a few stories and then will run out. Fear has a lot to answer for in my experience.

Now for the second half of this blog. The writerly half. Writers are supposed to write about what they know. That's true because they can't really use their brains to write a story unless the information contained in it is first in their heads. Think about that a bit.

All of our experiences, assets, fears, and talents are food for our stories. They contain the meat of them. The writing skills we learn become the bones from which the structure of the story hangs. My life of fears is why I write survival adventure romance stories. I can turn all of my experience at surviving as well as experiments into stories that have a natural feel to me as I write them.

Now for a true fear story.

My mother has always thought I should have a job. We were in the Colorado Rockies in a place called South Park. A water well drilling crew came to our cabin and drilled a water well. My mom was all over that as she wanted to understand and learn to witch for water. She did learn how, but also learned they were burning their food because they didn't really know how to cook. She offered me up on the altar of their hunger. She told them I could cook. Then she told me. I was nineteen. I was dropped off at their doorstep three days later. One skinny suitcase in hand.

As we came to a stop in front of a trailer house, I noticed a lot of the wood stacked in ricks. Lots of it. It turned out I was to live and work in this trailer house with three men. There was electricity--most of the time. The wood was used for heat and cooking. Cooking. Did you notice I said cooking? I had no idea how to cook on a wood stove. The crew was expecting real food and were so excited about it. I was to get up early and make bacon, eggs, biscuits (by hand) and gravy. I wouldn't have to chop wood at first I was assured. Chop wood. I didn't have a flying squirrel of an idea how to chop wood. Lunch the men would do on their own with standard lunch stuff. But supper. Oh, that was to be wonderful with steaks, stews, potatoes and all forms of wonderful things including pie. Pie...how was I supposed to make pie? I'd never made pie. How do wood stoves cook pie? There wasn't a dial or a thermometer on the thing...anywhere.

There wasn't a cookbook in the place.

There was a half wild cat that was half bobcat. I yelled at it to get out of the trash and it took out a window. First day on the job and I had a broken window to explain, and a missing cat, and no pie.

And it wasn't noon yet.

I did what any self-respecting teenager would do. I cried. Then I tried. Then I lied. I cried when I couldn't find any cookbook anywhere. I tried to get a steady fire going in the stove. I singed my arm hair off when I opened one of the 'eyes' on the stove top. Fire leapt out ten inches. I lied when they came in for supper. I told them all I didn't have time to make the pie because I was familiarizing myself with the supplies and settling in. Luckily, the steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy did the job of keeping their attention.

The area had nothing for signal--no radio, no television, and no phone. I found out I was to be left alone on Wednesdays while they went for supplies and I could have weekends off as the wife of the boss would cook on the weekends when she brought the entire family up.

That first Wednesday when I was left all alone I did as I was supposed to. I put some wood in the heating stove, wrapped up in a blanket to stay in that cot--not my normal room--so I could monitor the fire, get up through the night and put more logs on--or so I was instructed. I turned off the light. Crawled into those blankets--with all my clothes on. At first it was comforting to watch the flames. Then I wondered what would happen if a coal fell out while I slept. I'd burn to death. Then I heard the log drop in the firebox and bounce a few coals. Then I heard noises as the wind picked up. The groan of the trailer as it settled and changed temperature. Then I heard the log drop. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. The light dimmed as the fire burned lower. Then I heard the log drop. I stared at the glow until I thought I could take my eyes off of it and my backside was getting too cold, so I turned over. And heard the log drop. I was so tired, cold, and scared by the time morning came, because, you see, I'd only put one log on that fire. What had made that noise I'd heard every so often that I thought a log dropped? I never found out and get a creepy sensation to this day every time I think about it.

From then on, every Wednesday night, I slept under an electric blanket I bought that first weekend. I always let the fire go out. Before the crew got there on Thursday morning I started a new fire. I hid my electric blanket so no one would know.

After a while I learned to use the wood stove and have never made better food since. The cat came back and never got in the trash again--amazingly intelligent creature. I borrowed a cookbook from mom and learned to make pie crust. The pies that came out of that oven have never been duplicated. They were fantastic (really). There was a tiny hole in the back of the oven and it would shoot overheated air into the oven box, so, halfway through the baking I'd have to rotate the pie or cake or whatever was being baked. All in all, the experience is one I still hold against my mother, but I would like to have a wood stove to use occasionally (until I think about that wood-chopping thing).

The time was short at that job, not because the cooking didn't hold up to standards but because the wife of the boss didn't think a girl ought to be cooking in the mountains for an all male drilling crew. I never met her but thank God for her notions of propriety. I really hated having my jeans freeze while they hung on a line three days to get them dry. The men? They were great guys. All they wanted was good food--and of course--pie.