What Bugs Us

 We woke to a cool morning, a marine layer of clouds covering the neighborhood. After an hour of routine activities- making tea and checking my email- I told J to get ready for a walk. Our window of opportunity had opened and I was excited to head out into the fresh air before it closed. Once the sun burns through the clouds and the warmth of the summer breaks through, then the bugs are out, and that window of opportunity shuts with a resounding slam. 

Kiddo has a bug phobia which has become profoundly worse in recent years. What started as a fear reaction several years ago after being stung led to some lousy avoidance skills-- almost running into the street, almost running off a cliff, definitely crashing his bike-- to avoid a bee. A few years of talking to a therapist didn't budge this fear, and a subsequent sting from a yellowjacket at a Scout Camp didn't help.  We're on wait lists for exposure therapy, but after the pandemic, I think everyone's kids are in counseling, so that list is long. 

We head out on cool days, on rainy days. on days when the bugs aren't prevalent. Even then, he's often anxious-- or on alert-- when we walk, especially coming across well-loved gardens which have vegetation on both sides of the sidewalk. He'd prefer to walk in the street. Which is fine, as we mostly walk on side streets and main roads don't usually have that level of floral attraction for bees. 

How did it come to this? It breaks my heart, that my former Nature Boy, the kid who lived in the trees, is so afraid of even leaving the house that it's a near-refusal on sunny days. The pandemic seemed to be a setback because there was no 'let's meet friends in the park' or going to Scout camp.... the things which would have made the phobia more tolerable, the in-person company of friends, has been missing. With those motivators gone, the phobia took more control. 

I don't write this to complain about Kiddo-- this is not his fault. Not at all. I have a phobia of heights and can't be on even a stepstool unless there's something close I can hold onto. Otherwise, my vertigo kicks in and I feel nauseous and pukey. I can't help it, and I know Kiddo can't help it. But I'm grieving, for both of us. This morning, I'd hoped we could go have breakfast at the New Deal Cafe and had negotiated a 'let's just go look and see'-- a first step when we are being cautious about both bees and the Delta variant. Could we sit outside? Would the booths be spaced far apart enough? 

It didn't matter, the cafe was closed because it was Tuesday. I was disappointed I couldn't get that Greek Scramble I'd been hoping for, but also wondered if it had worked out the best, because then we'd surely get home before the sun came out and the High Anxiety Level started. It would have been the first time in a year and a half that I'd had any sort of breakfast out, and it will have to wait. 

Being the parent of a kid with a phobia is hard, much like being the parent of a non-neurotypical kid. It comes with the some of the same baggage, especially the ignorant assumptions that it is somehow our parenting that is the root of the child's challenges-- it ignores the fact that our kids are their own people and dammit, does anyone really truly know what's going on in anyone else's head anyway? I don't miss Kiddo's being 'normal' around bees, what I miss is the long walks we used to take down to Fifty Licks, or Tabor Bread or the various parks. I miss being able to sit outside as a family. I miss being able to enjoy an ice cream cone without having to run back and sit in the car with the AC on instead of strolling. (A good cone of ChoCoCoMel and a stroll is truly one of the finer treats, in my opinion.) 

I miss the more relaxed nature of our former walks, and I miss having options that embrace being outdoors. I hate having to nag him to use the exercise bike in lieu of going outside. I miss the companionship he offered on walks in the past, or the ability to hang out, catch a bus cross town, go to Scrap, or the Rose Gardens or up further to the cool of the Japanese Gardens in Washington Park. So many good memories of being out and about, exploring the city-- it's almost as though it's harder, having done those things we so enjoyed in the past, and now feeling tethered to the house more often than I would like. 

There's that moment, every time I have to explain to someone that Kiddo won't come out to say 'hi' because of this bug thing -- that moment when I hope he won't be judged for this horrible thing that's out of his control. It really does control him, and his terror at being stung is completely, viscerally real for him. It is true terror. 

I didn't really understand the depths of this myself, until I began to do some reading around this phobia and saw anecdotes and quotes from fellow sufferers. Grown adults who were so afraid to leave the house in spring and summer that they literally didn't, instead getting deliveries of groceries and working from home. Missing any event held outdoors like weddings, graduations, and gatherings; the fear is so intense that it impacts their social life. People who spend the entire summers inside and miserable, but that is still preferrable to the sheer overwhelming horror of encountering bees. None of this can be alleviated by logic or reason. The majority of voices sounded trapped in their phobia and my heart ached for them, too. Their perspective gave me even more compassion, empathy, and understanding for Kiddo. 

After a long, conversational breakfast at home, Kiddo toodled off to his room to play online with friends while I went out to work in the garden. The lavender flowers were already a haven for all sorts of bees, congregating on the small purple flowers, flying around happily as I passed by. Bumbles regularly like to do a few circles around me, they are the most curious of the varieties and tend to check me out when we're close to each other. After just a half hour outside, clearing some plants gone to seed, the sun smiled on me-- kindly at first, then incrementally turning on the heat until I came in, damp from perspiration and exertion. I miss his coming out to play while I work, rattling on about this or that, digging up something, decorating the garden with random toys. He's growing older, into a great kid, and if I could lift this burden of a phobia from him, I would in a heartbeat. For now, I bide my time and check the forecast for the next cool, cloudy morning.