Disaster Week


Rhiannon is paranoid. Her teachers have her running scared this week. I know it's not their intent, but my kid has learned that we are NOT safe. Forget alien invasion. Forget the Reds. What Rhiannon has is good ol' fear of the elements.

When we got home from school yesterday, she started asking questions, as if I had somehow been holding out on her about how the world really works, that it's amoral, and even if you are a five-year-old cutie, Earth couldn't care less.

"Dad?"

"Yes, Rhiannon."

"What if there was an earthquake."

"There are no earthquakes in Arizona." I think...

"Well what do we do if the apartment falls down."

She's really scared about this. She's read the storybook about the kid who jumps on his bed that it falls through the floor and takes the neighbors along for the ride ten stories down.

"The apartment's not going to fall down. We don't live in California."

"How do you know when an earthquake is coming?"

"You really don't until it gets there."

She looks green.

"Rhiannon, we live in Arizona. We're fine."

"What about volcanoes?"

"Volcanoes are in Hawai'i."

"Earthquakes, too?"

"I think so, yes."

Rhiannon actually starts to cry, as if the state of Hawai'i is the perpetual, active reminder of Pompeii, a modern day Herculaneum where good citizens live their lives under the threat of not an atomic cloud, but one of ash. She saw the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum. She knows what can happen.

"I don't ever want to live in Hawai'i."

"Rhiannon, we're never going to live there."

"I don't even want to visit!"

"Okay -- I promise we won't go there on vacation any time soon."

This calms her down a bit, and she goes back to her room to play. I'm guessing she's playing Red Cross in there.

Today after school, it's all about fire.

"Stop, drop, and roll, dad."

"Yep. That's what you do if your clothes catch fire."

"Or your hair?"

"Or your hair."

"And your lips."

I am trying really hard not to laugh. "And your lips. Just make sure you are out of the burning building first."

"Okay."

Tonight the terrors of the planet are far from her mind as she falls asleep in an instant. Her concern for her safety, and for the safety of others is genuine. There is love and care. And while it's true that she needs to know about how to comport herself in an emergency, and to not take candy from strangers, and to look both ways before crossing the street, there's a big part of me that wants her biggest concerns to be about what to play with next, and which color to choose from the box as she draws her own world full of flowers, princesses, and the occasional skeleton.

Rhiannon. Disasterously Cute.

Andrew (Papa)