Chicken Little

Did you ever experience something that felt significant, but you really weren't sure why?  I just had that happen.  I know it is a learning moment for me as well as some kind of insight. I'm still trying to clarify it in my head, though.

I live in an old house.  When we bought the house, we were just told it was over sixty years old.  Several years ago, I was washing the basement floor, getting ready to paint it a light blue color because being an old house, the basement looked a little scary, and a blue floor was my attempt at cheering it up a bit.  Once I started painting it, I noticed that under the stairs someone had written in the wet cement the year the foundation was poured:  October 21, 1910.  (Ironically, October 21 is my son's birthday).  This house is over 100 years old.  It still has some beautiful features that have aged very gracefully.  Seven fire places, all different.  All beautifully carved.  An oak staircase with expertly detailed banister and railing.  Some of the stairs have been slightly worn at the edges by an  untold number of feet running up and down through the years.  On the landing is a large stained glass window.  The pipes that once provided gas for the lights are capped off but still protrude slightly from various walls.  The ceilings and walls are plaster.  Most of them (the ceilings) have a few fine cracks running through them.  Twice, part of the ceiling has fallen. Once, in the kitchen, when we had a blizzard, and the snow had started as rain, then wet snow and then a lot of snow that piled onto the roof.  Once it started melting, the water found it's way through uncaulked windows, and through the walls, dripping into the ceiling.  I was laying in bed the night I heard the crash.  At the time I knew what it was.  The water had been dripping all day in one spot.  A lot of my friends had the same kind of damage done to their homes for the same reason.  The first time the ceiling fell, was shortly after we moved in.  It wasn't the weather. It was just because it was old, but a small section in the attic crashed down.  Other than that, the house, generally, has been very sturdy and reliable. 

My daughter decided to start drinking, again.  I'm pretty sure it was because her father contacted her but that's another issue.  Anyway,  I was sleeping, and was jarred awake by her yelling my name.  This doesn't usually happen.  I stumbled out of bed and into her room not knowing what to expect. There she was sitting on her bed looking up at the ceiling.  "What's wrong?"  She was pointing up at the ceiling and said,  "I think these cracks are new.  I haven't seen them before.  Not this many."  I rubbed my eyes, and looked up.  "First, there aren't that many.  Second, it looks the same as it always has."   "No.  No.  This looks different."  I looked at the clock.  Two in the morning.  What happened next was that I found myself arguing about the number of fine lined cracks in the ceiling.  She insisted there were more.  I knew there weren't.  Back and forth until I finally said, "So what?  So what if there are more cracks?  What's the worst that can happen?"  She looked at me with a blank stare.  "What if it falls on me?"  "You might get a bruise."   The look on her face struck something in me, and I said, again, "What's the worst that can happen?  If it falls, we call the insurance company and get it fixed.  That's it."  Again, she looked at me.  I asked her if she understood and she nodded.  I went back to bed.

Here's the insight I'm working on.  First, never argue with a person under the influence.  But more importantly, I think, is the metaphor of that whole conversation with life in general.  The angst I was starting to feel (maybe feeding into her anxiety) was starting to get me worked up inside.  What if it did fall?  What would we do?  I was feeling a little like Chicken Little.  And then, out of no where the calming thought of, 'So what?' occurred to me.  "What's the worst that could happen?"  Really, after experiencing what I've experienced, the worst that could happen so far has already happened, and here I still am, figuring it out and moving on.  Life goes on. We experience. We clean up.  We repair.  We grieve. We move on.  That conversation at two in the morning was like dawn for me.  What's the worst that could happen?  After enough 'worsts', even the very worst eventually doesn't seem that unmanageable.