The Zen of Fears

Seamus and I went exploring in the Japanese Tea Garden this morning -- I am into "things you can do for free with kids in San Francisco," and one thing is that if you get to the Tea Garden between 9-10am on a weekday, there's no entrance fee.  So, since we were over in that neck of the woods dropping Patrick off at the dentist anyway, we decided to go exploring.

We hiked over bridges, climbed up stairs, "jumped" from stepping stone to stepping stone, sat in dewy grass, smacked irises to make the glistening dew rain off them -- you know, your usual zen morning.  We also saw some big carp swimming lazily in the pond, and made fishy faces at them.

Seamus is usually nearly fearless, running off to explore new things, running up to new people to smile at them and see if they'll smile back at him, squealing as he runs up to dogs to say hi.  But lately, I've started to notice him having more fears -- this morning, for example, just 15 minutes after greeting a couple of dogs, he backed away in fear from a squirrel.  I don't know that he's ever seen a squirrel up close, so I guess that's part of it -- but I was surprised when I pointed out a squirrel running across the path toward a tree about 15 feet in front of us, carrying a nut in his mouth, thinking Shay would love to watch him run up the tree... and instead Shay sort of wimpered, turned around, and clung to me.  I tried to explain that he didn't need to be afraid of the squirrel, but he just wanted to wave bye-bye to it, which, in this context, means "let's get the heck outta here."  So we left the squirrel and walked up the hill, and then I crouched down to toddler level and pointed out a big statue of the Buddha, sitting cross-legged in the shadow of a tree near where we stood.  He barely looked at it before turning around to cling to me.  He refused to walk by the Buddha, and insisted on being carried past that area.

I guess it's good, for him to have fears of unknown creatures -- and that Buddha is a little scary-looking, I'll give him that.  It makes me feel safe that he runs to me when he sees something unexpected or feels unsure -- I mean, at least it makes me feel safer than knowing he will run fearlessly into anything.   He did, however, try to climb over a rock so he could get into the pond and make fishy faces up close to the carp, and I tried really hard to seem calm while I held him back.  We are both working on the zen of our fears.