A Story About Bravery is the fourth of four installments of a data-laden narrative. The story follows a parent in the fall of 2018 dealing with the conjunction of crises we face.

Older brother wants to listen to the story podcast. The host asks, “What are you afraid of?” My ears perk up. I hit pause. Older brother responds, “Black holes swallowing the earth.” I say, “Global warming.” He adds, “Oh yeah, and pollution. And what’s that thing in the ocean? The g-thing?” “The gyre,” I say. “Yeah. That’s scary.” Baby sister smiles confidently. “If she could talk, she’d say super-loud noises,” my son says.

We hear a story about a boy who is scared of everything. I was that boy. My son is that boy. If the Common Sense Media review tells us the movie has “mild peril,” we don’t bother. He literally ran screaming from the room when Cookie Monster was having to fight vegetables on Sesame Street. As for me, I remember being so superstitious as a child that, as a 4th grader alone in my room, I swung my crucifix around to my back to take care of any ghosts that may have been behind me. It was that year, 4th grade, when I first learned of global warming. It made sense to me, took hold of me. If you eat too much chocolate cake, you get sick. Too much fossil fuel burning, sick planet. I didn’t need any more facts.

So my son and I are relating to this story of the scared boy. We learn his background: a cruel uncle who is a great warrior. Macho. He teases the boy, his charge. One day, the boy is running through a scary part of the forest and an unknown voice cries out in fear. Being fearful himself, and empathetic, his heart speaks up: go help. He plugs his ears, but his heart is louder than his fear. He runs to the voice and finds a trapped rabbit. He frees it. This magical rabbit (of the moon) offers him whatever he wants in return. “I want courage,” says the boy. The rabbit says he can help the boy find it, gives him a dagger, and starts him off on a path. 

From there we hear of trials the boy faces on his path. He looks to the rabbit in the moon for assurance along the way. For the first trial, he has to act tough to intimidate crocodiles. During the second trial he uses cunning to escape some snakes. The story gets its name from his third trial: the monster who grows small. As the boy gets closer to the monster, it appears smaller. If he runs away, it appears bigger. He notices this and runs with his eyes closed all the way to the monster’s cave. He can’t find the monster, but then looks down. There it is, the size of a big frog. The monster announces that his name is “that which is yet to come.”

I quickly relate the monster to a sink full of unwashed dishes. If they sit there, gosh, I don’t want to do them. My son interrupts my thought train: “Dad, black holes just get bigger when you approach them. And then they swallow you.” It’s a theory, and it’s true. He watched a NOVA episode about black holes when he was four. Longest he had ever sat for a single show. The event horizon is a tipping point beyond which anything that crosses it gets sucked in. Real-life symbolism in objects that are very, very far away.

Thinking of black holes triggers me beyond my tipping point toward the staggering crisis of the Anthropcene. Coral bleaching, 1 billion trees cut down every year. Soil nutrient depletion. Tipping points, the event horizons of earth systems. I decide I will not tell my son that the more I know about global warming the further I get sucked into the black hole of climate catastrophe fear. “Global warming is similar to black holes,” is all I say. My daughter is still smiling.

My son and I review the strategies of the boy (we talk strategies a lot). He says, “Ok, the first is like Secret Life of Pets 2, where Max has to pretend to be brave to save the sheep.” “That’s what most people call fake it ‘til you make it. Which is basically practicing what you’re supposed to do as you do it. A great strategy in so many areas of life,” I tell him. “Next he tricks the snakes,” he says. “Cunning,” I say. “Not exactly the same as bravery, but a great strategy if you can keep your head clear enough to be clever in a stressful moment.” “The last thing is to get close to what you’re scared of,” he says. “Look your fear in the eyes, someone might say,” I respond.

We drive on. Katherine has fallen asleep, ruining bedtime. We pass developments for which trees and fields were cleared. These carbon-captive technologies, these “Shady Groves” with their cookie-cutter houses with giant garages on the front. Locking people in to carbon-intensive lives.

“Almost home,” I say. “Dad, what about the first part?” my son asks. I don’t know what he’s talking about. “There’s one more strategy in the story, when he saves the rabbit.” It dawns on me that in a few short years my son will be far more clever than I ever was, and that my wisdom better accumulate fast if I’m going to have anything to bring to our relationship. At least at this point, when he is 5 years old, I can pick up what he’s laying down. “Ah yes, ‘His heart spoke louder than his fear.’ Another great strategy,” I say.

His heart spoke louder than his fear. No macho stuff. No trickery. Listen to your heart. Just like Roxette sang in 1989. Put fear to the side and do what needs to be done.

Like put my baby to bed despite a nap at 7pm. I’m nervous I’ll panic again, but in the meantime fulfilling my immediate purpose takes enough effort to stave off the mind-calving event. The night towers above me, imposing, like a cliff. When climbing big walls, I’ve been at the bottom, looking up knowing that perspective foreshortens the distance to the top. How will I get up there? A conscious decision to start climbing. One pitch at a time, leaning on experience and resigned acceptance that many dangers are uncontrollable. Weather, rockfall, equipment failure.

The night is scarier than a cliff. In climbing I control every move I make. I take care, I ensure, I secure. The rest of life is where the chaos is. Babies, poli-tricks, highways.

I have my smart phone security blanket in my pocket. I usually try to avoid screen time while rocking her but I have to have the distraction from the well-worn runnels of my mind that led to the cliff’s edge last night at 3am. I put on “Listen to Your Heart.” I read the lyrics as it plays. Not enlightening, turns out. I recall graffiti scrawled on the wall of a bathroom in a climber hangout in Peru: “Nada es seguro/Todo es possible.” At the time I was emboldened by the statement. Nothing is for sure, anything is possible. As a parent its possibilities are terrifying. Nothing is secure. The worst is possible. The world can indeed fall completely apart.

I Google quotes about bravery. Banality for the masses. I add “famous Black women” to my search terms. Bingo. Audre Lorde said, “When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”The monster didn’t get any smaller.

My heart speaks louder than my fear. I put on Raffi lullabies and set the phone on the dresser. I go back to the glider and rock. I stare at my baby’s face and tell the memory section of my brain to do a really, really good job with the size and shape of her head, eyes, nose, mouth, and cheeks.

I give my heart like a tree gives its fruit. Like the yellow poplar I reach up and out into the space between my baby and me as her beauty calls me into relation and out of my self, out of my obsessive thoughts of destruction because here, now, we are safe, just like on the side of a cliff. The danger is not gone, but we are together in the moment and so we can take another step. Me with my purpose as dad, she with her silly faces and bravery.