Ankle Grabbers

2/7/08

By Trish Pennypacker
Special to the Critic

In a quiet corner booth at a local diner, I sip my coffee slowly while my daughter chats with my mother. Ever since my father died a little over a year ago, my Mom and I have been meeting for lunch a couple times a month. This is a big deal. Conversation with my mother isn’t easy. But this past year has done to my resentment and understanding what sunlight does to blue jeans on a clothesline: faded and softened. In many ways, I see her differently now. She no longer seems as dependent and clingy, stuck completely within a shell I don’t understand. She is bravely becoming independent, trying to move beyond her sorrows. Our conversations have gotten deeper. Today, especially, I notice an extra softening of her features.

Pushing her food aside, Mom leans onto the table, glancing around before confessing she is considering dating again. With giddiness she tells me about a man she’s interested in. I laugh as she tries to imagine him in my place: a table between them, casual dinner, conversation. Not an easy task for a woman who hasn’t dated in 34 years. “What if I can’t date? What if I compare every man to your father?” She sits back and shudders, a mixture of fear and excitement. Taking a deep breath, I try to reassure her that the beauty of life consists in not knowing what to expect. Everything will be ok.

She smiles as she watches my daughter munch ketchup soggy fries. “You used to be just like her,” she reflects. Ha! Me: the child of defiance and dreams, the child that believed tigers lived under the bed and could be tamed with coaxing. As stubborn and dreamy as I used to be, I doubt any other child would be as entertainingly inquisitive and bold as my daughter.

I look at my daughter, her deep green-brown eyes intent on the couple seated in the next booth. “Where do you come from?” she asks them, not caring that the man’s face is hidden beneath a black mop of a beard. The man mumbles something. The woman smiles weakly. Not the friendliest of couples. My daughter doesn’t care; they are new to her. I think she’ll never stop quizzing them but in the middle of rapid questions, the crayons on the table grab her attention. She wants to draw monsters.

Monsters have always fascinated and never frightened her. One of my favorite snapshots was taken the Halloween she was almost eight months old. In the middle of an ogre, a pirate, and Frankenstein sat my smiling baby-witch. Two years later, trying to explain that a four-legged Rover might bite just encourages her to sigh “but Mom” as she coos “nice doggy” to the Mastiff on the street. Someday she’ll have more fear; it’s just her age, I try to convince myself. But after a long noisy slurp of her chocolate milk, she disappears beneath the table to look for Ankle Grabbers. They are, after all, under everything.

I turn my attention back to my mother, noticing her voice has taken a deeper tone. She’s worried about running out of wood and oil. I sympathize. I moan about rising prices and keeping the kids fed. She talks about loneliness, the family. “Did you know your grandfather’s not doing well?” she asks. “The doctor prescribed him sleeping pills. Mostly for anxiety since he’s afraid to sleep. Doesn’t think he’ll wake up.”

I wonder how he must feel having outlived a son. I feel sorry for him, painfully so, but my youth (and my exhaustion from raising the daughter staving off Ankle Grabbers) keeps me from fully grasping a fear of sleep, the limits of time. I am young enough to still believe in hope and future. As Annie Dillard says, “We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up.” I never feel fear for very long, for I’m too busy being amused by my daughter’s tall tales, each day anticipating what wondrous thing she’ll do next. Still, when I assure my daughter there are no such things as Ankle Grabbers, am I telling her the truth?

Maybe not. Maybe the Ankle Grabbers of a toddler’s world manifest themselves later into too high gas prices and soaring mortgage rates, awkward dates, the end of a marriage, the stress of an academic exam, a job interview, doctors’ appointments, sleeplessness, depression, old age. That a global truth lurks in the unknown may be at the heart of our fears. To fear to the extent that I no longer find even the slightest joy in life is worst, to me, than death itself.

My mother continues talking hopefully about the future. I ask for a refill of coffee and laugh as my mother shrieks when cold hands wrap around her ankle. “Don’t move,” my daughter says. “I’ll scare the Ankle Grabbers away.”