What if...?

Laila seems to have inherited my tendency for paranoia for things and events imagined. She is so like me this way.

Last night, she had a crying spell over almost all conceivable tragedy that could occur in her life. She started with the benign imaginings over what if her classmates do not like to be friends with her. Her scenario is complete with details about one event from the last school year when her arm got twisted. (This I know is real because she told me about it. In her recollection, though, Baby Cat omitted the fact—which she personally relayed to me shortly after it happened—that she engaged in some pretty mean, i.e. wickedly fun, arm-twisting herself.)

Her scenario-building soon progressed to what if people in school don’t recognize her and she’s not allowed in. Then her world of scaries expanded to include me. What if I grow old and is downed by a prolonged illness. I would die and she wouldn’t have a Mom. And what if both Daddy Cat and I grow old, sickly and die; then she would truly be alone with just her Ate Lyn.

Or, what if the police lock me up; then I’d have to eat, watch TV and take a bath in prison!

She was so distraught I couldn’t bare to laugh out loud. But I wanted to. I wanted to so much.

She is so funny the way she is afraid of so many things that she cooks up in her head. And yet she is not afraid of falling off a Ferris Wheel—which she loves to ride—and all other scary activities kids who are not familiar with danger engage in.

I think she got that from me. I tend to cook up catastrophe and tragedy in my head. Even as a child, and especially now as an adult.

Perhaps Dad’s passing away stirred up Laila’s many fears. She knew that daddy Cat’s Dad is dead and is in heaven with T-Bag (her hamster), but she hadn’t known him while he was alive. This is probably why her perception of death was quite detached until Daddy.

Baby Cat had known Lolo alive. His passing made death much more real to her. She learned that people who were alive could die and they would never live again.

Laila knows dead people become angles and the closest ones become our Guardian Angels. They gain the magic powers, become invisible and weightless. They sit on our shoulder to protect us from harm.

But we can’t embrace them like we conventionally do.

I am thinking about Dad now. And I know that, definitely, Laila gets her tendency to be despondent from me.