A Scary Story
By Callie Feyen
@calliefeyen
I promise this is not going to be an essay about my dog, Corby.
Except that last night, she and I went on our first walk together. Jesse came too. We walked to the bus stop, a less than five-minute walk. I know this not because I’ve taken that walk, but because on the eve starting middle school, Hadley timed it herself while I stood in the backyard like a – well – like a puppy waiting for her to return. “I can do this in under five minutes, Mom,” she told me, holding her phone for me to see the timer on her screen. “I know the way,” she said shoving the phone into her jean shorts’ pocket. “I’ll be fine.”
That was two years ago, and no, taking a school bus is not a dangerous act, but yes, I felt fear and also excitement, a combination that dare I say I’ve come to savor. These days, I’m starving for a morsel of that combo because every single thing we do around here is to stay safe, and so now we have a dog, and on an evening after dinner with a few hours before bed, and nothing to do and nowhere to go, the most reckless thing I could think to do was put Corby’s leash on her, stand at the door and yell, “I just want to go on a walk with my dog and my husband and nobody else.”
So we did.
On the corner of our street, there is a small dog that could fit in your pocket, and it doesn’t seem to have any fur, and I think that its lack of fur and also size makes it insecure, so naturally, the dog’s a bully. It comes skittering over like a demon and barks at us, and Corby is afraid, even though in mere weeks, she will be able to swipe it across the street with a flick of her Michael Jordan sized paws. Corby didn’t know this though, and cried and tucked her tail between her legs while the thing howled, “Get off my lawn!”
Corby wasn’t going to move. She was shaking. She put her little puppy rump on the ground, then laid her head down and put her paws over her eyes. Jesse leaned down and picked her up.
“Sometimes,” he said quietly as he carried her, “it’s hard to turn a corner.”
***
“I want to go cliff diving,” Harper tells me one afternoon. I suppose I could blame the pandemic for Harper’s extracurricular interest. She’s bored out of her mind, and so why not dream up cliff-diving to shake things up a bit? But it’s Bella Swan of the Twilight series who’s at fault. Harper learned about cliff-diving in New Moon, the second, and Harper’s favorite book in the series. This is where she becomes friends with Jacob Black. This is where she rides motorcycles and cliff dives. This is where, in Harper’s words, “Bella finds out about herself and what she can do.”
“Cliff-diving is something you’re gonna need to do without me knowing it,” I tell my baby girl who is no longer a baby.
“Put it this way,” I begin, and I tell her about the first summer I had my license.
My mom told me I could not cross Harlem, which was a busy street that was also one of the boundaries of Oak Park, the town I grew up in. Basically, what my mom meant was, during these first several months of having my license I was to stay in my neighborhood. I understood this.
However, my mom only mentioned not crossing Harlem, which was the West boundary. She said nothing about Austin, the East boundary that, once crossed, would no longer be a suburb, but the great, exciting, bright lights, big city of Chicago.
Hand to God, I never crossed Harlem that first summer. I tell you what though, there is nothing like playing beach volleyball at night with the lights of the skyline on one side of you, and the waves of Lake Michigan on the other. Or throwing rollerblades in the back of the car, shoving a bit of cash in your cut-off jeans, and heading downtown to skate the boardwalk until you get tired and so you jump in the lake to cool off. Or eating pizza with your friends at Gino’s East. Or taking a nighttime stroll through Lincoln Park Zoo.
Or stealing a kiss in Grant Park.
Of course, all that is just mustard (never ketchup) on the Chicago style hot dogs my friends and I would treat ourselves to. What I’m talking about is the drive downtown—staying in the left lane because that was for the fast cars, blasting the radio, the convertible top down, racing the el to see who could be a part of the skyline first. I’m talking about doing something scary and exciting that you probably don’t need to do, and maybe you shouldn’t, but you want to find out about yourself. You want to see what you can do.
“I’m glad I didn’t know,” my mom will say, feigning exasperation but perhaps in a deeper, more haunting depth, she shares what all mothers come to realize the moment they become mothers: it is only our children that can do the work of finding and becoming and reframing and refining themselves. Mothers cannot do this for us.
***
Jesse and I turned the corner, walked a few more feet, and he set Corby down. The furless toy dog was still barking, Corby was still shaking and crying, but she was also walking, and sniffing, and looking around.
“She’s scared, but she’s curious,” Jesse said.
“Good girl,” I crooned again and again, because that’s what I was told I’m supposed to do to show the dog that she is okay; that she can keep exploring. Tell her she’s good.
I decided we’d get a dog at the tip of August on an evening when Jesse and I were sitting outside of a cabin he’d rented for the four of us. The cabin was a ski cabin, built at the bottom of Nub’s Nob, a ski resort in Northern Michigan.
We were sharing a beer, and maybe it was because of the perfect summer weather, and maybe it was the significance of the place—Jesse and I spent our honeymoon skiing Nub’s Nob almost 22 years ago—and maybe it was COVID, and maybe it was being totally overwhelmed with the task of raising two teenage girls, and maybe it was that my therapist had recently suggested (strongly) that I ought to take something for my anxiety and depression (she didn’t laugh when I asked if I could just go to Target instead). Maybe it was all of that, but I think on that evening, I had a Bella Swan moment.
Surely, she was terrified, and I know she was sad. What she loved the most was seemingly gone forever. But I think she was tired of her fear and her sadness. I think meeting Jacob, the best friend she’d ever had, helped her turn a corner, and now, standing on a cliff watching those waves crash below, she might’ve still been sad and afraid, but I think she was curious, too.
Cliff diving is not the same as getting a dog, I will not argue that it is. Something tells me that not as many books would’ve been sold had Stephenie Meyer written, “And then Bella got a dog.” But I know something about fear and sadness, and I know that they don’t just go away. I have been afraid of dogs since birth, and I have been a ruminator—often a very dark one—for the same amount of time. The night I told Jesse we should get a dog, was my attempt to be scared and curious at the same time. It was me finding out about myself, and what it is I can do. It was accepting and embracing myself as a question, always waiting for me around the corner, to be found.
***
Harper’s fallen for romance. That is, she’s after the good story. The one that’s packed with love and danger, and the thrill of crossing boundaries into an exciting new era full of chance and risk. I can’t keep her or her sister from that. Edward, despite all his efforts, couldn’t keep Bella from that (only monsters can succeed at this). There’s no way a parent can.
I suppose I have fallen, too. Or, I am choosing to fall.
So I think I’ll offer my jumping off cliff stories, and not just successful ones, but the painful and scary ones, too. I think I’ll keep living them as well. I think living them is how a heroine is made.
And like Bella, I want my girls to be the heroes of their stories.
***
On our return home from the bus stop, Corby turned the corner all by herself. No crying, her head was held high, her tail wagged back and forth. Maybe she got used to where she was. Maybe she knew she was almost home. Maybe curiosity got the best of her, and she realized this was just the beginning of all she was about to find out.
“Look at her go!” I said to Jesse, pounding on his arm like we were watching a football game and Corby was about to score a touchdown. Corby stopped and turned around, looking at me.
I’m still afraid of dogs. But I kneeled down and reached my hands out to her to cradle her face—something I never in a million years thought I’d do—and said, “Good girl, Corby. You’re such a good girl.”
Photo by Lottie Caiella.