Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
from the earliest times he can remember, Dougie worried that something might happen to his Mama, whom he loved dearly, and whose attention he craved more than any other person in the whole wide world. Now, why would Dougie even know how to worry about his Mama, even when he was two years of age? Probably Walt Disney had a part in it, as Disney was HUGE in the early 1960s, with every single Disney creature losing its poor mother. Of course, so many of the fairy tales from antiquity also focus on this, a child losing its mother, or both parents. And I think naturally children realize they need their precious Mama, and a child senses, early on, regardless of how safe his home, his yard, his neighborhood, his county, his city, his state, his very country -- the fact is, the world is, was and always will be a very dangerous place to live upon, or underneath (living in caves), or above (living on stilts).
One of the most horrible nightmares Dougie ever had did not involve monsters, or evil strangers, or even the Coo-Coo Bird (although that one was a doozy), but he had probably seen something like it in cartoons; however, the version Dougie experienced wasn't very funny or cartoonlike. Plus Dougie had been warned and warned often: "Do not run out into the street!"In the dream, Grandpa Medvee and Dada were playing catch with a bright white baseball, out on the front lawn of Dougie's house in Huntington Beach, California. Mama and Dougie and his sisters were all watching the two alpha males toss the baseball back and forth. Norman Rockwell never painted this picture, even with the Southern California palm trees poking out of the green, green grass of home, but the tableau is imprinted upon the little boy's mind, throughout eternity.Suddenly the baseball rolled out into the middle of the quiet small city street (small back in the 1960s, quite voluptuous these days)."Don't worry, I'll get it!" Mama called, smiling. She ran out into the street and proudly lifted up the baseball, even hopping a little in her happiness. She started back to the family, holding out the baseball.Just then a massive steamroller came lumbering by the house, far too fast, and it rolled right over Mama in less than a second. The steamroller left no cartoon flattened Mama, but only a sad wet spot that didn't look anything like Mama.Only Mama's pristine white hand, proferring the pristine white baseball, remained. The hand lay prettily upon the jet black street.Dada approached the hand, lifted it up, and showed everybody who stood gaping, frozen in the grass, rooted to the lawn."Don't worry," Dada said, "We'll keep this to remember her."And Dougie woke up fully weeping, heart-broken.Nature, or nurture? A little boy loves his Mama, and instinctively, his greatest fear is that when Mama goes away (Mama was always a working Mama, working for that second income all the days of Dougie's childhood), she just may not come back.And the mind has a way of tidying house, scraping all these fears and insecurities together, sweeping them into the dustpan, and some of the residual anxiety dust may seep out into the dreaming mind.All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
important - FIGHT THE FLU WITH HERBS - important
