fear, her cold fingers around my neck

I was afraid on our trip. And I feel somewhat ashamed in admitting that fear. I go to these places to be fearless, and yet, I feared.

That we'd be ambushed on a dirt road in the car, held hostage. Shot. It may or may not have been the guns. It may or may not have been the stories of not going out after dark, of the particularly high murder rate, of the gangs.

It held me back. J wanted to explore and I would hold back. Hold backing with the banner i am a mother now, i can't go around being careless and creating an irreversible situation that M will be stuck with. But truth be told, I hid behind that. The fear, see, was more irrational than rational. And if anything, it made me feel old.

Because the reality was that amidst all the stories of danger, the warnings, the words of advice, we saw not one thing to make me fearful. Never once were we in a situation that was dangerous. Not even when we were pulled over by the police. In my mind, for those few minutes, I thought, this is it. This. is. it. But it was exactly the opposite. Friendly words exchanged, allowances for the idiocies of the gringos, and directions offered.

Fear. It's a major obstacle and motivator in my life. One that has wasted time and space and living. One I hate to admit to.

Fear, see. She gripped me on this trip, out of my element. Not all the time, but enough of the time that it felt like the old wooden yokes I saw around the necks of the oxen the farmers drove down the highways. Like the bars on the doors and windows. Like the helplessness I felt when seeing the dirt floors inside the corrugated shacks where some women raise their children, unimaginable, restricting, shameful that any child must be raised sleeping next to pigs and on a dirt floor.

It's humbling, fear. It reminds me of my vulnerability and of my responsibility.

The question is how to harness it, to use it for light instead of dark. To make it fluid rather than dusty and welded to my ribs. Because in retrospect, I missed some things. And the whole point, see, was to not miss a thing.