Jumping over tigers

We had a little visitor this week. A wild child, whose crazy, curly blonde locks seemed to be alive with her constant motion. Brave and uninhibited, she ran around the house chanting, singing, and hollering. Why? Because she's 3 and visiting family... A new house with a pet, different toys and a whole new audience to entertain/ envolve in her merrymaking. It was a blast. I let the stress of the stuck proposal get to me more than I wanted to, but I still thoroughly enjoyed watching Wonder Pets, seeing the Disney princesses at work on the little people farm and driving a jeep made out of building blocks. That's the great thing about creativity, it knows no bounds. If you don't have something, you make it out of something else. Mind = blown.

One particularly poignant moment came mid trip. She had gotten a stuffed pig from the zoo and had him playing with the little people pigs- he looked more like a mastodon than a member of the family next to his porcine brethren. There was a wind up tiger- maybe Shere Khan from an old happy meal- who was threatening the three little pigs (well, two little, one gigantic pigs). She separated from the story, moving the tiger slightly and then began running circles around the tiger and jumping over it, back and forth, round and round. Laughing and shouting incoherently.

In my favorite stories, tiger represents fear. Tiger stories are about blood, pain, death and terror. Anansi Boys and The Jungle Books have plenty to say on the subject of tigers feeding on fear and flesh...

I'm taking a page out of Em's book. I'm relearning how to laugh at fear. How to run dizzy circles around it and leap it... How to dance around it and mock it instead of hoping in vain for it's absence.