Country life
Conquering fear
Leanda de Lisle
Imagine if someone had a fear of ... bluebells,' my second son reflected as we walked out of the back door of my par- ents' house. 'They'd have to stay indoors for the whole of spring.' I reminded him that what mattered was not what someone might fear, but that his younger brother was actually afraid of both swings and bicycles. That morning was to be dedicated to help- ing him learn to enjoy both — whether he liked it or not.
I hadn't been aware that the baby of the family was afraid of swings until that very day when, out of the blue, the middle boy confessed that some years ago he and the eldest of the three had 'tortured him' on one. I asked what that meant exactly. With his victim looking on with a fierce pout, the torturer explained that they had sat him on a swing, twisted it round and round and then asked the gardener's teenage son to use his strength and height to lift him high up in the air and then propel him forward into a spinning circle. I was assured that they had intended to give him a fun time, but unfortunately it soon became clear that he was, instead, simply terrified.
My still twiglet-sized boy had howled and screamed for his brothers to stop his crazy flight path, but, since he was travelling too fast for them to attempt any such thing, they had simply looked on with embarrass- ment. The middle boy felt that the time had now come to make amends. We — his parents — must cure his brother's phobia. A few gentle pushes on the swing that hangs from a slightly rotten branch in the woods should convince him that they aren't always death traps. In the event, the branch held and our task proved simple enough. I hoped that our good luck would hold for the rest of the morning, for we now had to teach the boy how to ride a bicycle.
Do you remember what a nightmare sta- bilisers were? Unstabilisers would be a bet- ter word for them. At six years old, I was nervous about removing the chipped white stabilisers that had so long been attached to my blue and yellow bicycle. But, after a few falls on the rather large, pointy stones on my parents' drive, I was at last free of those dreadful impediments to speed and style. This morning would see my youngest son enjoying a similar triumph, if rather later in the day. He is already nine years old. That makes him sound pretty weedy. But, while ugly old people like to believe they were braver as well as better looking than the dashing youngsters around them, we weren't, you know.
While my husband learnt to ride a bicy- cle on an adult-sized model that would hurl him to the ground from a great height, he did have safe roads to practise on. How many of those are there now? I had to take my elder sons miles away from home to find a road free from articulated lorries and speeding sports cars. By the time it came to number three son I had frankly had enough. Thus it was that the years passed until last Saturday when we finally found ourselves in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. My second son's bicycle — now too small for him — was in the garage, the sun was shin- ing and close by we had the traffic-free roads of the firing range turned woodland nature reserve that borders my parents' property.
The twiglet was anxious about the falls ahead but, after I explained that the slower he went the more likely he was to end up on the floor, the boy was up and away, grinning with delight until he ended up in a clump of nettles. You have never seen any- thing like the leaves on these nettles. They were a foot long if they were an inch. It must be all the rain we've had this summer. In an attempt to head off the complaints, I told my badly stung child that he was lucky he hadn't landed on a dog rose, or a bram- ble bush. Now I fear he may swap his past phobias for something new. 'Beware the bluebell,' I can here him say, 'for it shares its home with the deadliest woodland vegetation.'
`Can I take your disorder?'
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