“Daaaaaaad!!!!! Get it!!!! NOW!!!!”
My 3 year old points to the street, where my husband had just set out the trash, at the bags of aqua green flitting in the wind.
She can’t stand it. The sight of anything BLOWING. It fills her with anxiety and dread. You can see it on her face. My husband has to run out to the curb and retrieve the bags he just moments before hefted toward the street.
When he comes back in through the door, her little body relaxes and she goes about her business. I look at my husband and give a whisper of thanks.
I, too, was just there last week. Running like an idiot through the parking lot of Walmart to chase a flyaway bag because I thought she was going to have a heart attack.
Or the time I heard screaming coming from the bathroom. “MAKE IT STOPPPP!”
I thought something terrible had happened.
I raced into the bathroom to nothing spectacular, much to my relief. Just the towels on the towel bar blossoming slightly upward from the force of furnace air emanating from the register.
Then it all came back to me. The garbage bags. The parking lot. The wind. All of these factors equaled one thing and one thing only: they made my girl ANXIOUS.